The sheriff grinned. “Guess you’ve never plowed on a tractor at night,” he said. “What with the roar of the motor, and having to watch the furrows, you don’t see or hear much.”
“Go ahead,” Walworth said curtly.
“Well,” the sheriff went on, “this man caught up with the girl and jumped off. By that time, the girl had been running a long way and the man was fresh. He caught her just as she stumbled and fell, right on the edge of the plowed ground. The purse was what he wanted. After he stabbed her, he got the purse. And the horse, being a trained cattle horse, stood there stock still as long as the rope was dragging on the ground. The man finished his murder, got back on the horse and rode in a series of aimless circles around the plowed ground so it wouldn’t look as though a horse was being directed by a rider in a straight line to the fence. But the man got to the fence all right after making a few turns. He rode the horse alongside the fence, slid off on the other side of the fence, untied the silk rope, and turned the horse loose. The horse wandered back around the plowed ground. Because we were all looking for the tracks of a murderer and because a whole field full of horses were galloping around and cutting didoes, nobody paid any attention to the horse tracks in the plowed ground. The man that was doing the plowing came on around, and because he was watching the edge of the plowed ground pretty sharp, plowed right past the figure on the ground without seeing it. In fact, he didn’t see it until he’d made a couple more turns and the moon had come up.”
Sheriff Eldon’s audience was listening with rapt attention.
“So I sort of thought,” the sheriff said, “that if you’d take that microscope and examine the pants of this here murderer, you might find where some of the horse’s hairs were worked into the man’s pants, and then if you could prove that they were the same hairs from the old bay saddle-horse that John Farnham sold Sam Beckett a while ago, you just might find someone to put that lie-detector on,”
Walworth looked at the sheriff blankly.
“You see,” the sheriff went on, “the murderer would have to be somebody that knew how to ride pretty well, and who knew which one of the horses in that field was saddle-broke.”
Farnham got to his feet. “What in hell are you talking about?” he demanded.
“Just thought it might be a good plan to take a look at those pants of yours,” the sheriff said, “and then I thought maybe you’d like to take a lie-detector test, seeing we’re going in for some of this new-fangled business.”
“You’re crazy!” Farnham said. “But look at my pants all you damn please.”
“Not those pants,” the sheriff said. “You probably went home and took your pants off and left them to be sent to the cleaner, but you see, John, I read in the paper that your wife had gone away for a long visit, and it occurred to me that if you’re sort of batching around the place, there wouldn’t be anybody to send stuff out to the cleaners, so the pants may still be in your house. You know, it’s a great thing in these country towns to read the newspapers and keep up with...”
Farnham lost his head, rushed the sheriff.
The neat agility with which the sheriff swung to one side was matched only by the smoothly timed precision with which his left hand blocked Farnham’s blow. His right came up in a smashing impact to the jaw.
“Well, now,” the sheriff said, tugging handcuffs from his belt, “I thought maybe he’d lose his head.”
12
To the little group gathered in the front room of John Farnham’s house, Martin Walworth displayed his findings.
“These trousers,” he said, “have numerous hairs from a bay horse worked into the cloth. It’s very evident that this horse was being ridden bareback. I’ll want real tests, but I would say from the texture of the hairs that it was a horse from fifteen to twenty years old.”
“Tut, tut,” the sheriff said reproachfully. “He told Beckett it was twelve.”
“And,” Walworth went on, “on the coat of the same suit there are not only hairs from the same horse, but on the right coat sleeve near the cuff are unmistakable stains of human blood. An examination will show whether this blood is of the same type as that of the young woman who was killed. The subject refuses to take a lie-detector test.”
“Well, now,” the sheriff said in his slow drawl, “having gone that far, I guess we might as well go a little farther and sort of look around and see if we can’t find the purse that he took from that girl. He probably wanted to get rid of it somewhere, and — well, you know, I wouldn’t be too surprised if he might have buried it out in the backyard. Just suppose we sort of take a look around there.”
The search of the backyard proved fruitless. But the sheriff worked with painstaking patience. He went over every inch of the ground and then searched the house.
Eventually they found what they wanted in a closet in the basement. Back of some preserves was a purse containing the driving license of Elizabeth Dow, whose address was San Rodolpho. And in that purse was a folded paper. On that paper were two photographs and ten fingerprints. One of the photographs was of John Farnham’s profile; one was full-face. The sheriff read the paper and grinned. “Now, Higbee was a smooth one,” he said. “When John Farnham came to this county and started in being a real-estate agent, a professional reformer and a political crusader, the rest of us just took him as a pain in the neck, but old Marvin Higbee evidently got some detectives and spent a little money finding out where Farnham came from. Maybe he got some fingerprints from letting Farnham’s hand get pressed against a glass window some time. But you see what he got — this little dodger says: ‘Wanted fob Embezzlement.’ No wonder Farnham quit agitating for an investigation of that school-construction job. Higbee had this and he let Farnham know he had it. You can consider how Farnham felt when Higbee died, the fruitless searches he must have made — and then the feeling of security — until he knew someone else was searching. Well, there’s your motive, men.”
The district attorney stretched out his hand. “I’ll take charge of that,” he said.
“Well, now,” the sheriff drawled, “it seems to me that I’m still the sheriff of this here county. I uncovered the evidence and if you don’t mind, boys, I think the sheriff’s office is going to take charge of it. And if anybody else thinks different, why, the line forms on the right, and you can put your coats on that old chair over there until we get done with the argument. I’m kinda old, but I’m still spry.”
No one said anything.
The sheriff took the purse and paper into his custody. “And now,” he said to Martin Walworth, “you’ve really educated me, sir. You have, for a fact. It seems that evidence should be fixed up so it can’t be substituted, and since you’ve been called in as a criminologist by the district attorney to help clean up this crime, and since the bill is going to be passed on to the taxpayers, whom I happen to represent, you might just as well sign your name on the margin of this here piece of paper so there won’t be any chance of its being substituted or any smart lawyers raising any question as to whether or not it’s the same piece of paper we found hidden in the house here. Thank you, sir. Thank you kindly.”
Old Bill Eldon seemed tired as he settled down in his favorite easy chair.
“You’re home early,” his wife said.
“Yep. Got all finished up down at the courthouse.”
“Thought you were working on that murder case,” Doris said.
“I was.”
Her eyes snapped with interest. “You mean you’ve got it solved?”
“That’s right.”
“Who did it?”
“John Farnham.”