Dust had been carefully cleaned from a table in the kitchen. On that table the sheriff found waxed paper, bread crumbs, a lipstick, and a hammered silver cigarette case. At one end of the table there was a charred streak some two inches long and bordered with gray ash, which had apparently been made by a burning cigarette.
The sheriff examined the linoleum floor. One burnt match was lying underneath the table, and also on the floor were two cigarette stubs, both of which had been pinched out. One held the tell-tale red of lipstick.
Eldon picked up the cigarette case and turned it over. He saw that a heart had been engraved on the side, an arrow intersecting the heart. There were two initials on the arrow, R at the feathered end and B over the point of the arrow.
After studying the cigarette case thoughtfully, the sheriff placed it back on the table just as he had found it. Then he turned around and, to the accompaniment of squeaking boards and scurrying rodents, left the house as he had entered it. He took care to close the creaking side door behind him.
It was nearly eleven when the Quinlan telephone rang stridently, insistently.
Beryl threw a robe around her shoulders and ran from her bedroom. “I’ll get it, Mother,” she called as she passed her mother’s door.
“Thank you, dear.”
Beryl fairly flew down the stairs. She raised the receiver and said breathlessly, “Yes, yes, hello. This is Beryl Quinlan.”
The drawling voice of the sheriff came over the wire. “Your father there, Beryl?”
“Why, no. Isn’t he with you? He hasn’t come back yet.”
“Hasn’t got back yet?” the sheriff asked.
“Why, no, he went out to investigate that murder.”
“I see.”
“Can I take a message?”
The sheriff said, “If you will, please. When he comes in, tell him I want to get in touch with him right away. Someone left a silver cigarette case out here at the Higbee place and I want him to look it over for fingerprints.”
“Very well. I’ll tell him.”
“Tell him to bring that fingerprint outfit of his and to be sure to bring his camera. It’s a silver cigarette case with a heart engraved on it and an arrow through the heart. There’s an R on one end of the arrow and a B on the other. You tell him, will you, Beryl?”
“I’ll... tell him... Goodbye.” The words came haltingly. And the hand that slowly lowered the receiver back into place seemed to have turned to ice.
The cigarette case she had given Roy for Christmas!
And then another thought, which for some time had been uneasily asking for attention, suddenly popped out to the front of her consciousness. Long Distance had told Roy to deposit twenty-five cents. If he had been at Fort Bixling the rate would have been eighty-five cents.
“Beryl,” her mother called from the head of the stairs, “what is it? Nothing’s happened to your father, has it. Your voice sounded...”
Beryl’s laugh was harsh. “Good Heavens, no, Mumsie! Go back to bed. I’ve... I’ve got to go find Father.”
“Find Father? Why, Beryl, what’s the matter? What’s happened? Tell me. Don’t try to keep it from me.”
“Don’t be a goose, Mumsie. It was the sheriff. He wanted Dad, that’s all, wants him to take some fingerprints right away.”
“But your father’s with the sheriff.”
“No, he left.”
“Well, the only thing you can do then is wait for him to come in and...”
“Oh, I think I can find him,” Beryl said casually, dashing upstairs. “He’ll probably be at the Gazette office.”
“Then why don’t you telephone?”
Beryl’s cold fingers were frantically divesting herself of her pajamas, picking up lingerie. “He might not be there, Mumsie. He might be some other place where I could just run onto him. I’ll drive up and down the main drag, and see if the car’s parked somewhere. Remember, he took his own car. I can spot it as far as I can see it.”
“I wish you’d telephone, dear.”
“Nonsense. I’ll jump in my little whoopee and have Dad located in no time. You be a good girl, Mumsie, and don’t worry. And if Dad should come home — tell him I have a message for him.”
“Can’t you tell me what the message is, and I...”
“I’ll tell him,” Beryl said. “Tell him to wait for me,” and she went streaking down the stairs.
4
It was nearly midnight when the sheriff drifted into the coroner’s office.
“George here?” he asked.
“Yeah, he’s in back with the doctor.”
“What did the doctor find?”
“Stab wound in the back — left side. Think it went straight in.”
The sheriff said, “I’ve been trying to get hold of him. I... Here he comes now.”
George Quinlan stepped out of the back room. “There isn’t a drop of blood on the skirt, Bill,” he said. “It was a stab wound. Missed the heart, but severed one of the big blood vessels. Death was almost instantaneous. She might have lived for a matter of seconds. It’s hard to tell.”
The sheriff nodded. Then he beckoned the undersheriff out to one side. “Been lookin’ for you, George. Did you see your daughter?”
“She got me on the phone a few seconds ago, said she’d been driving around looking for me. Said you had some fingerprints. I was just starting for the office to pick up the fingerprint outfit.”
“I told her to try and get in touch with you,” the sheriff said. “There’s been a couple of people in the old Higbee house, walking back and forth across the floors, sort of zigzagging like, and out in the kitchen I found where some sandwiches had been eaten, and there’s a girl’s lipstick and a cigarette case. I thought there might be some prints and...”
“You didn’t touch those things?” Quinlan asked.
“Well, just sort of picked them up and looked them over,” the sheriff admitted.
“Let’s hope you didn’t smudge any fingerprints. Gosh, Bill, I’ve told you a dozen times that you’ve got to be careful handling things that...”
“I know, I know,” the sheriff said, “but I thought it was pretty important to see the other side of that case. Had to turn it over, you know.”
“How about the lipstick?”
“I didn’t touch that.”
Quinlan said, “Let’s go. I’ll stop by the office and get my fingerprint outfit.”
“You got your car here?”
“Uh huh.”
“I’ll meet you out there,” the sheriff said.
“You want to take a look at the body?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Not right now. Get prints of her fingers?”
“Yes.”
“What do you make of her?”
“Natural blonde, blue eyes, smooth skin, a beautiful girl, somewhere between nineteen and twenty.”
“Too bad,” the sheriff said, and then added after a moment, “I’ll be seeing you out there.”
There was little traffic on Main Street at this hour, so the sheriff swung out close to the center of the street. He opened up the County car, but didn’t use the siren. This time it took him nearly fifteen minutes to get to the Higbee gate.
The sheriff got out of the car and opened the gate. Then he paused as his headlights disclosed tire tracks which had been superimposed on the tracks left by the tractor.
Quinlan drove up to find the sheriff down on hands and knees studying those tracks with the aid of his spotlight.
“What’s the idea?” the undersheriff asked, jumping out to stand beside the sheriff. “You found something?”