Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Murderer’s Bride and Other Stories

Corporal Cortland and Dr. Dixon in The Case of the Murderer’s Bride

Lawrence B. Ives had two basic objections to the income tax. He objected to listing his occupation and he was annoyed that his business expenses could never be claimed as a deduction.

Lawrence B. Ives was in the business of murdering women.

So far as Ives was concerned, it was a reasonably safe and highly profitable occupation. It required a certain amount of research work, quite a bit of ingenuity, a pleasing personality, and a lot of reading.

Ives read the newspapers. He read them carefully, concentrating on news of tragic accidents.

Like many of our higher courts, Ives believed in following precedent. One tragic accident would arouse his interest. A duplication of that accident would start a file on the subject. A third such accident would cause him to start looking for a new wife. The fourth accident would then cause him to set his plan in motion.

New wives were not as difficult to find as the accidents.

Lawrence B. Ives never ceased to be astounded at the number of women who had passed the first third of their lives in a dull routine, who were starved for affection, and who had carefully saved their earnings.

His wives were all of a general type: women who had sacrificed their chances for early romance because of an unselfish devotion to family. After the sisters and brothers had married and the parents had passed away, these self-effacing breadwinners learned to accept vicarious love affairs. Being starved for affection, they frequented the newsstands, buying magazines which dealt with romance, or they spent long evenings in the public libraries.

Larry Ives was 36 years old, but he represented his age as a youthful 48. He spent considerable time and quite a bit of money buying his clothes. He was a good conversationalist and had a way of worming information out of librarians and from the clerks who presided over magazine counters. He also spent quite a bit of his time riding in public conveyances, looking for women who were reading the love-story type of magazine.

In making applications for a marriage license, he never listed his prior matrimonial adventures; but that was a minor omission — one which he regarded as of no greater legal importance than driving 50 miles an hour in a 35-mile zone. He could never be prosecuted for bigamy since, whenever Larry took on a new love, he was always definitely finished with the old. In fact, he made certain that his wives were very, very dead before moving on to his next conquest.

Earlier in his career, Larry had had to work with considerable rapidity. This had caused him to take certain risks. Now, with a large measure of financial stability, thanks to his unique gainful occupation, he didn’t need to work so fast.

His current wife had been named Nan Palmer before she became the radiantly happy Mrs. Lawrence B. Ives.

Nan Palmer’s outstanding characteristic had been family loyalty. She had had an unselfish devotion to those she loved. Her father had died when she was 12. By the time she was 16 she was supporting her mother, her sister Effie, and a younger brother.

Effie had selfish charm and dazzling beauty and was always promising the family a wealth of luxuries after she had “made good in Hollywood.” She won a beauty contest when she was 18, and two divorces later had quit writing home.

Nan had put the younger brother through two years of college, and then he was killed in Korea. Her mother had never been strong enough to work, but had lingered on for years.

Nan’s salary had been good, but it had all gone for living expenses, the ever-present doctor bills and nursing fees. There had been less and less money for Nan to spend on herself. She had learned to make her own clothes, she never went to a beauty shop, and she had adapted her life to a steady routine of drudgery: eight hours at the office, a ride home in a crowded bus during the rush hour, shopping at the market, cooking for an invalid, washing the dishes, cleaning up the house, doing the washing and ironing, sewing clothes, falling into bed, getting up in the morning to the chore of getting breakfast, washing the dishes, making the beds, and leaving for the office.

After Mrs. Palmer died, Nan had become so immersed in her routine that she didn’t know what to do with her leisure. She had never before had leisure. Now, she had time to read and she was thrilled by the adventures of heroines who were swept off their feet by gallant Prince Charmings who were always tall, generous, wavy-haired, thoughtful, handsome, and wealthy.

Nan Palmer was made-to-order for Lawrence B. Ives.

At first she couldn’t believe her senses. It seemed absolutely incredible when, after several chance meetings and brief conversations in the library, it became quite evident that Mr. Ives found her attractive.

Ives had his line down pat. He was, he said, a lonely widower who had traveled around the world. He wanted intellectual as well as physical companionship. He had learned that all is not gold that glitters and that beneath many a plain exterior there beats a warm, affectionate heart which is capable not only of steady affection but which can at times pour forth streams of molten passion. They were married in Yuma, Arizona.

Once having snared his victim into matrimony, it was a part of Ives’s campaign to stress his wealth and his exciting plans for their future together. He disapproved of his wife’s friends. He wanted to get her away from everything pertaining to her drab past.

None of his requests seemed odd to Nan. She was more than willing to escape from the colorless life she had always lived. She cooperated wholeheartedly by investing his money in beauty treatments, in charm and posture lessons, and in a sizable wardrobe of new clothes. Larry’s wife, Nan reasoned, must be groomed to entertain as an attractive and charming hostess. She even took foreign-language courses so that she would be a credit to him when they went abroad. To Nan, life had just begun, and she planned to live it in the fullest possible manner.

The drain on Larry’s capital caused him some dismay. It seemed a rather unnecessary expenditure on a woman who would be laid to rest in a few months. But the results, he had to admit, were esthetically satisfying. He was astounded at the change in the woman who had been drab Nan Palmer. She continued to wear her dark hair in a manner which best suited her simplicity. Her figure became strikingly attractive, and her taste in clothes proved to be unerringly chic — as well as consistently expensive.

Her first bashful responses to love had suddenly been swept along on a tide of released emotion until Ives found himself thinking of “retiring” and settling down to enjoy himself with his loving wife.

However, the chains of habit are strong. Sooner or later a man always returns to what the police list in their files as modus operandi. And so there came the day when Ives brought up the matter of life insurance.

Ives didn’t care for large policies. He preferred small policies with different companies, and he knew of several companies which wrote insurance by mail. In fact, Ives had a most comprehensive knowledge of life insurance. His wife saw nothing suspicious about this. Her husband had a brilliant mind and a dazzling fund of general information.

After nine months of marriage Nan still couldn’t believe her good fortune. She would sit by the hour while Larry was scanning the newspapers, watching him with her heart in her eyes. He was wonderful.

Ives, despite himself, followed his habit of scanning the papers, although somewhat reluctantly. In the past he had always been impatient as he built up his file of unusual but fatal accidents. Now, when he would gladly have taken a more leisurely course, it seemed that suitable accidents were described in every issue of the newspapers.

One class of fatal accident, however, claimed Ives’s attention with a certain fascination. These accidents were capable of artistic developments which thrilled the creative urge in his soul.

Ives had three clippings on these: one had occurred on Lake Mead, another on Lake Tahoe, and the third on Lake Edward. The fatalities were such as to lend themselves admirably to Ives’s scheme. They were particularly suited to the place at which he had chosen to become a grieving widower.

People went out in boats with outboard motors. The weather was warm, the surface of the lake was fiat calm. They stopped the motors and drifted along far out from shore. The urge to jump in for a cooling dip where they needed no bathing suits became irresistible. So over the side they went.

Though the lake was calm, there was a gentle breeze. The weather station placed it at two to five miles an hour. However, because the boat was drifting slowly along with that breeze, the boaters didn’t notice it. It wasn’t until they had been swimming for a minute or two that they turned their attention to the boat. They saw it some 200 yards away. Startled, they started swimming toward the boat.

Panic led them to assume a pace they couldn’t maintain. For a while they were gaining; then they slowed down in breathless fatigue. The boat glided in effortless mockery, steadily moving, always out of reach. Again the swimmers, lured by the seeming nearness of the boat, spurted into frenzied swimming.

Unless they were unusually strong swimmers they could never make it. The boat would be drifting as fast or a little faster than they could swim. So they became panic-stricken.

By the time the most powerful swimmer in the group, who had worked himself into a state of almost complete exhaustion, finally decided to quit the futile pursuit of the drifting boat, at least one of his companions was missing. Once a swimmer reaches a point of complete exhaustion in fresh water, panic will do the rest.

Three accidents. Ives needed a fourth in order to make his scheme perfect.

He found it on page one of the second section of the paper:

Larry looked over at his wife. For a long moment he hesitated; then he slipped a sharp penknife from his pocket and cut the clipping from the paper.

“What is it?” Nan asked.

“A report on some mining activities, dear... How would you like to take our boat and trailer over to the Colorado River?”

“I’d love it, darling!”

Larry sighed and regarded her speculatively, almost wistfully. Then he tightened his lips with firm decision. After all, Ives was a businessman, and the premiums on those insurance policies, not to mention Nan’s extravagances, amounted to a fairly heavy outlay.

It was the duty of Corporal Ed Cortland to read all the crank mail that came to the police department.

This mail was of all sorts: rambling dissertations from persons who felt they were being persecuted, anonymous tips from disgruntled neighbors, phony confessions from persons who bad no real knowledge of the details of the crimes to which they were confessing. They had read newspaper accounts of some crime, and brooded over it, and finally had sought to make atonement for some real or fancied sin they had committed by confession to one they hadn’t.

Corporal Cortland had a trained eye in such matters. He could spot the type of writer from a glance at the first paragraph.

The fifty-second letter that he opened on this May morning was different from the others. It read:

“I am writing to the police department because I don’t know to whom else I can write.

“I knew Nan Palmer when she worked up here. She was steady, industrious, a quiet girl who gave the best years of her life to an invalid mother.

“Then Prince Charming came along. He gave the name of Lawrence B. Ives, and he really was handsome. None of us could see why he was so attracted to Nan.

“It was a whirlwind courtship. They took a plane to Yuma and were married. Soon after that they moved away. And Nan never wrote to any of her friends.

“I wouldn’t have had any idea where she was living if it hadn’t been that an insurance company wanted to find out something about her in connection with an insurance policy she was taking out. The investigator talked with me. He told me she was living somewhere in or near Los Angeles.

“I still thought nothing of it until I happened to be looking through an old illustrated magazine in cleaning out some of the papers in my attic.

“I saw a man’s picture and knew there was something familiar about the face. At first I couldn’t place it, then I suddenly realized it was Lawrence B. Ives.

“Only this time he wasn’t going under that name, but under the name of Corvallis E. Fletcher.

“His picture had been published in connection with a tragic accident. He had gone up with his wife in a light plane and had persuaded the pilot to do a few stunts. Both passengers had reported their safety belts were firmly fastened, but it turned out that Mrs. Fletcher hadn’t understood the proper method of fastening her seat belt. She had been thrown out of the plane and had fallen 3,000 feet.

“As soon as I saw that, picture I was certain I’d seen the man before. It isn’t a very good picture and he had a mustache at the time, but I feel certain it’s the same man. I’m sending the picture along together with the clipping.

“I think the Fletcher accident should be checked, and I think someone had better ask Mr. Ives how it happened he changed his name.

“This is just a hunch, and if you do anything about it, for heaven’s sake don’t let Nan know that I wrote this letter. I worked with her for several years, and I like her and she used to like me. I don’t want her to think I’m getting nosey and interfering in her affairs.”

Corporal Cortland put this letter to one side and during the course of the evening mentioned it to his friend Dr. Herbert Dixon, the medico-legal expert on forensic pathology and homicide investigation. Dr. Dixon became interested.

It took the police less than an hour to locate the apartment house where Mr. and Mrs. Ives lived. Dr. Dixon and Corporal Cortland drove around to the place. The manager, a large friendly woman named Mrs. Meehan, explained that Mr. and Mrs. Ives had left on a trip. They had given up the apartment and had loaded some of their baggage into their car; the balance had gone into storage. She understood they were going to live in Arizona. They had taken their boat, outboard motor, and trailer with them.

Mrs. Meehan informed them that Mr. Ives was a remarkable personality — charming, magnetic, polished. His wife was sweet and really beautiful. They were very happy together. Mr. Ives didn’t work. He evidently had some sort of independent income. Mrs. Meehan thought he was interested in mining.

Mr. Ives had settled all their bills before they left. They had only been gone a couple of days and the apartment wasn’t cleaned up yet. It would be put in shape tomorrow. Mrs. Meehan let Corporal Cortland into the apartment and left him and Dr. Dixon there to look around.

Dr. Dixon found the copy of the newspaper from which a news item had been cut out. The edges of the cut showed that it had been made with a sharp knife held by someone with a steady hand.

Corporal Cortland rang up the newspaper office, got them to check the issue in question and relay the story to him. When Dr. Dixon learned that it was a story of a tragic accident in which two swimmers had been lost in Lake Havasu, he became thoughtful.

A check of the telephone company showed that Ives had paid up his account. The record showed that the last long-distance call on record was to Searchlight, Nevada.

When Dr. Dixon phoned the Nevada number, the man who answered remembered Ives’s call well. The man operated a service station, and from his office he could relay calls over a private telephone line which stretched across the desert to Lee Bracket’s Eldorado Landing, a distance of 50-odd miles by road.

Ives had asked him to relay a call through to Bracket’s to see if accommodations were available, and the reservations had been made.

The service-station manager said that usually when he accommodated people by making reservations for them, they at least did him the courtesy of stopping in at his station to say thank you and to fill up their tanks with gasoline.

Ives had done neither.

After this conversation Dr. Dixon reached a quick decision. “I’ve been planning on a little vacation, Ed. I’m going to drive down there to the Colorado. Think you could get permission to go along?”

“I could if you recommended it as an investigative job,” Corporal Cortland said, grinning.

“I’ll recommend it,” Dr. Dixon grinned back.

The road to Bracket’s camp wound down a long slope from the crest of the mountains to the river. The last two or three miles ran past weird rock formations that looked like great petrified mushrooms.

Where the Colorado River had once been a turgid, dangerous stream, there was now a clear blue lake stretching from Davis Dam, some 40 miles to the south of Eldorado Wash, to Hoover Dam, 20 miles to the north.

“This,” Corporal Cortland announced with conviction, “is the life.”

They found Lee Bracket playing gin rummy with a tourist whose dour expression was an eloquent reflection of his mismatched cards.

Lee Bracket didn’t discuss his guests with strangers, and Corporal Cortland, correctly interpreting Dr. Dixon’s faint shake of the head, refrained from producing his credentials and making the visit official.

They did learn, however, that boats were available for daily rental. A survey of the parking facilities showed that a car bearing Ives’s license number and an empty boat trailer were parked in position.

Guarded inquiries of the attendant in charge of the boat landing brought out the information that Ives and his wife were not fishing but were collecting rocks.

For miles around the camp the slopes were composed of river-worn sand-polished rocks of varying sizes. Even the rankest amateur could pick up beautifully colored agates, jasper, and fossil-encrusted rocks. Some of these could be cut into gem stones; others could be “tumbled” into colorful collections of costume jewelry.

The attendant at the dock described Ives’s boat; a 15-footer, red and white, of glass fiber, powered by a 35-h.p. outboard motor, capable of some 25 miles per hour.

The only boat which was available for renting was considerably slower. Dr. Dixon and Cortland rented this boat and spent the rest of the day in a futile search, Dr. Dixon sweeping his binoculars in a study of every boat they encountered.

They returned to Bracket’s just about dark to find Ives’s boat tied up at the dock.

While Dr. Dixon stood guard, Corporal Cortland gave the boat a swift survey. A cardboard carton in the bottom contained 20 or 30 pounds of desert agates and jasper. Quite evidently, Mr. and Mrs. Ives had spent most of the day on shore gathering specimens.

In the camp’s dining room Dixon and the police officer encountered Mr. and Mrs. Ives, as well as several other guests, in conversation around the large circular dinner table. The two men joined the group and without any indication of their professional pursuit they introduced themselves. They were welcomed with friendly informality.

Ives, Dr. Dixon noted, was somewhat reticent, but courteous and affable. Mrs. Ives was a beauty. Her conversation was brisk and intelligent and her sense of humor was as apparent as her happiness. Nor was there any doubt about her devotion to her husband.

Ives seemed quite solicitous about the weather. He asked repeated questions about the winds. It was clear that he had no intention of getting caught in a storm or rough weather.

“We are really landlubbers at heart,” Mrs. Ives laughed. “You don’t ever need worry about us,” she assured the proprietor. “We only go out when it is pleasant.”

Later that night Dr. Dixon discussed the matter with Corporal Cortland. “I’ve never seen n woman so bride-eyed. She is desperately in love with him, Ed. We can’t afford to make a wrong move. Not only would we be exposing ourselves to a suit for damages and for defamation of character, but what would be even worse, we might be ruining her faith in her husband.”

“But we have the goods on him,” Cortland insisted. “We know he’s been going under another name. It’s the same guy all right.”

Dr. Dixon said, “Suppose he was going under another name? It’s only a suspicious circumstance, that’s all. We’re going to have to wait until headquarters gets some more information on this Corvallis E. Fletcher.”

“Okay by me,” Corporal Cortland said with a sudden grin. “This is the most pleasant assignment I’ve had in twenty years. Only let’s not give him so much rope that he can be dangerous.”

“We’ll try to keep an eye on things,” Dr. Dixon said. “We—”

He broke off as the door of one of the cabins opened and an oblong of bright light pierced the darkness. A figure was silhouetted against the oblong.

“That’s Ives now,” Cortland whispered.

Ives, apparently with something under his left arm, stepped out of the cottage, turned to say something over his shoulder, closed the door, and then, producing a small flashlight, started down the sloping road to the wharf landing.

Dr. Dixon tapped Cortland on the arm. The two followed silently, staying in the shadow of the cliff to the south of the road.

They heard Ives’s steps on the boards of the wharf.

“He’s getting something out of the boat,” Cortland whispered.

“Or putting something in,” Dr. Dixon said. “We’re in a precarious situation here, Ed. He might spot our reflections in the water. Let’s get down and sit close, so we’ll seem to be a shapeless shadow.”

They sat on their heels.

“I’d like to go shake the guy down,” Cortland grumbled.

“We can’t take the chance, Ed — not until we can get a definite identification on that picture. Even then, we’ve got to find out something more about his background before we dare to move in. I wouldn’t make a mistake in this case for worlds. I keep thinking of that look of utter devotion in her eyes! She’s hypnotized. It would be a crime to spoil it.”

They heard vague, muffled sounds from Ives’s boat.

Soon Ives’s feet pounded back along the wooden wharf, crunched on the gravel of the road, and then they saw him walking slowly back up the hill to his cabin. He seemed to be carrying something in his right hand.

Dr. Dixon and Corporal Cortland fell in behind so they could see his silhouette against the light from the cabin grounds.

Midway to the cabins, Ives stopped at the garbage-disposal barrel and tossed something in. Then he walked on to the cabin door. A moment later he was flooded with light from the interior of the cabin. The watchers saw a pair of arms circle his neck. Ives stepped inside, the door was closed, and it was dark once more.

“Now what the hell!” Cortland said. “He went down to the boat for some purpose. Do you suppose he’s suspicious of us and went down to see if we’d been examining the boat?”

Dr. Dixon shook his head. “He didn’t even look back when he went down to the boat or when he returned to the cabin. He isn’t suspicious — unless, of course, he’s very suspicious and is laying a trap for us. The first thing we must do is to see what he tossed into that barrel.”

They waited a half hour, then Corporal Cortland led the way to the disposal barrel and played his flashlight on the contents.

The big metal drum was three-quarters’ full: empty tin cans, cardboard cartons, a pair of discarded tennis shoes.

“It must have been the tennis shoes,” Cortland said.

Dr. Dixon leaned over to study the barrel carefully.

“It has to be on top, Ed,” he said. “He didn’t bend over the barrel, as would have been necessary if he had shoved anything down. He just dropped something in. Moreover, if he had moved anything, these empty cans would have made a clatter.”

“It has to be the tennis shoes,” Cortland decided.

“Let’s take an inventory,” Dr. Dixon said. “There are a pork-and-bean can, a cereal carton, two dishwashing detergent boxes, a tomato-juice can; here are two empty sardine cans, a newspaper, the tennis shoes, a pair of badly bedraggled socks and... wait a minute, what’s this? Here’s a pair of pliers with one of the jaws broken off.”

“It must have been the tennis shoes,” Cortland said.

He picked them up. The shoes had been badly worn down to the point where the sole on the right shoe had a circle which had worn almost through.

“A tennis player,” Cortland said. “He pivots on his right foot when he serves. Notice how the right shoe is worn more than the left.”

Dr. Dixon remained thoughtfully silent.

“Not convinced?” Cortland asked.

“I don’t want to jump to conclusions,” Dr. Dixon said. “Let’s go take a look inside that boat.”

“Do you suppose he could have planted a bomb in the boat, one that’s due to explode tomorrow sometime?”

“Anything’s possible,” Dr. Dixon said, “but we’ve got to have evidence before we make any move.”

They searched the boat thoroughly. It contained a paddle, an anchor attached to 50 feet of new rope, a spare gasoline tank for the motor, and two kapok-filled cushions which could be used as life preservers in an emergency. There were no fishing rods, no bait boxes, nothing to indicate that the boat had ever been used except for hunting rocks. There was, however, a new icepick. There was no sign of anything that could have been used to conceal a bomb.

“He didn’t put anything in the boat,” Ed said at length. “He took something out.”

“He had something with him when he went down to the boat,” Dr. Dixon pointed out.

“The tennis shoes, Doctor?”

“Why should he take the tennis shoes down to the boat, stay in the boat a while, then turn around, bring the same tennis shoes back, and throw them away?”

“How do we know they’re the same tennis shoes?” Cortland asked. “Suppose he bought a new pair of tennis shoes. He had left his old ones in the boat. He went down to the boat, put on his new tennis shoes, picked up the old tennis shoes, took them back and threw them away.”

“Then these old tennis shoes had been left in the boat?” Dr. Dixon asked.

“Yes.”

“He walked down to the boat carrying new tennis shoes with him, put on the new tennis shoes down here, and took the old tennis shoes back. That still leaves an extra pair of shoes. What happened to the shoes he was wearing when he walked down to the boat?”

Cortland thought that over. “I guess I’m getting ahead of myself, Doc,” he admitted. “But I still think the tennis shoes are the key to the whole thing. Let’s go back to the cabin and get to bed. We can’t do any more here.”

It was four o’clock in the morning when Nan Ives suddenly awoke. She lay still, her heart beating rapidly as though she had been startled. Then, as she felt the secure warmth of Larry’s arms around her, she relaxed and sighed happily.

“Let’s get up, darling,” Larry whispered.

She turned toward him.

“Now? It’s so early.”

“It’s wonderful out. The stars are blazing. It will be light by the time we get the boat going, and we can see the dawn out on the lake.”

She smiled. “Just as you say, dearest,” she said and kissed him.

While they were dressing she said, “What about breakfast?”

“That,” he said, “is the nice part of it. We’ll go down to Cottonwood Cove for breakfast. The scenery is beautiful on the way down there and they have a nice little restaurant with good cooking. You’ll love it.”

Fifteen minutes later, arm in arm, they were walking down the sloping roadway toward the water.

The east was beginning to show light. Already a slight tinge of color brightened the sky. Overhead and to the west, however, the stars were steady, blazing, and brilliant; the air was warm and balmy. The water was like a sheet of glass, reflecting the eastern sky, the stars, and the dark outlines of the mountains which bordered the lake.

Larry helped his wife into the boat, saw that she was comfortably ensconced on a seat cushion, and, having untied the boat, pushed off into the warm half-darkness.

Dr. Herbert Dixon, awakening early, showered, dressed, and returned to the bedroom where Corporal Ed Cortland was sleeping soundly.

The criminologist stood over Cortland with a wet washcloth in his hand and squeezed a single drop of cold water on Cortland’s forehead.

The officer twisted his face in an expression of distaste. A second drop caused him to sit up, throwing off the covers.

“Hey!” he said thickly.

Dr. Dixon grinned. “Come on, up and at ’em, boy! This is a new day.”

“What time is it?”

“Six o’clock.”

“Go away, that’s too early. No need to get up yet. We can’t even get any coffee. The people that run this place don’t stay here; they live seven miles up the road.”

“Never mind coffee,” Dr. Dixon said. “We’ll reconnoiter. Perhaps we can have a chance to talk with Ives before breakfast.”

“Slave driver,” Cortland groaned, getting out of bed.

Dr. Dixon plugged in his electric shaver and by the time Cortland was half through with his shower, the criminologist was walking slowly down the road to the water.

He moved toward the dock, then suddenly stiffened to attention, whirled, and started walking rapidly back up the hill to the cabins.

“Hey, Ed,” he said, “Ives’s boat is gone.”

“You kidding?” Cortland asked.

“No. It’s not there.”

“What about the automobile and the trailer?”

“They’re here.”

“Then they must have taken off for some rock hunting. They’ll be back for breakfast.”

Dr. Dixon frowned. “Hang it!” he said. “Perhaps Ives did suspect us. If anything happens... Well, it’ll be just too bad for him.”

“Don’t be too sure,” Cortland said pessimistically. “You have to have proof, remember? And the trouble with accidents is that the survivor always tells a plausible story; he’s the only witness and—”

“Come on,” Dr. Dixon interrupted, “let’s go.”

“Upstream or down?”

“We start upstream,” Dr. Dixon said. “They were downstream yesterday. They’ve probably gone up today.”

“We can’t get breakfast anywhere up there.”

“Yes, we can. Willow Beach. Twelve miles or so. We can be having hot coffee in an hour if you’ll just get started.”

They made the run up to Willow Beach. They saw majestic scenery, towering vertical cliffs reflected in placid water, the golden line of sunlight crawling slowly down the mountains. But there was no sign of Mr. and Mrs. Ives.

At Willow Beach they stopped for a fast breakfast and talked with a fisherman who had been out early and who said no boat had gone by.

Hurrying from the restaurant, they gassed up, opened the motor wide, and headed downriver. They gassed again at Bracket’s. By this time the sunlight was warm. The lake seemed calm, but looking along the reflected path of the sun one could see the glint of small ripples.

Corporal Cortland was running the motor. Dr. Dixon was carefully scanning the lake with the binoculars, frowning impatiently at the numerous coves in which a small craft might find concealment. Dr. Dixon felt he didn’t have the time to go into each one of those coves. A sixth sense gave him a feeling of urgency.

He wanted desperately to catch sight of Ives’s boat. Something seemed to tell him that this was the crucial day. It was exactly the sort of day that had been described in the newspaper clipping-warm with a faint breeze and the urge to swim becoming more and more a temptation.

Both above and below Bracket’s camp a rough attempt had been made to designate the miles by painting figures in white on rocks along the shore, or by arranging whitewashed rocks in the form of figures.

At seven miles below the landing Ed Cortland mistook the channel and went into a big bay, which finally curved back to disclose the true channel. Going around a point they came to where the lake broadened out into a vast sheet of water.

Now, from time to time, they saw other small boats. This caused more loss of time. Dr. Dixon had to study each boat with binoculars. Nor did he dare stop passers-by to give them a description of Ives’s boat and to ask if they had seen it. He did not want Ives to know that he was taking an unusual interest in him.

After the nine-mile sign Dr. Dixon found no more signs. There was, he felt, a ten-mile sign, but somewhere he had missed it. A growing tension developed inside him.

He moved aft to sit beside Ed Cortland at the tiller.

“Ed,” he said, “I’ve thought of something.”

“What?”

“The thing that happened last night. We looked into that trash barrel and—”

“And saw those tennis shoes,” Cortland reminded him.

“That’s what fooled us,” Dr. Dixon said. “Everything else that was in there was something you would have expected to find in a disposal unit out in front of cabins. The tennis shoes were unusual, so they attracted attention. Everything else was perfectly ordinary, except perhaps the broken pliers.”

“What are you getting at?” Cortland asked.

“Ives threw something in there,” Dr. Dixon said. “We thought it might have been the tennis shoes because they were unusual, but we can’t make his action in doing that sound logical because he carried something down with him under his left arm, and when he came back he dropped something in the barrel.” He paused. “There were two empty detergent boxes in it.”

“But what would a detergent have to do with murder?”

Dr. Dixon indicated the cushion on which he was seated. “The Coast Guard requires life preservers in a boat,” he said. “These cushions are filled with kapok. They act in the dual capacity of seat cushions and life preservers. The kapok is exceedingly light and it’s oil- and water-resistant. It’s buoyant, not only because of its own lightness, but because the oily surface repels the water and holds lots of air bubbles trapped inside the matted interior of the light, fluffy substance.

“Now, then, a detergent is a peculiar chemical compound. It consists of a substance which has an affinity both for oil and for water. It’s as though you had a long molecule, one end of which is fastened to the oil, the other end fastened to the water.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Put enough powdered detergent inside one of these seat cushions and throw it in the water,” Dr. Dixon continued, “and for a while nothing will happen. The outer surface is water-repellent, but as soon as water starts getting in, it will mingle with the powdered detergent and then more water will start getting in. The minute the powdered detergent mingles with the water, it becomes a wetting agent and the cushion will rapidly lose its buoyancy.

“When detergents were first invented, they conducted an experiment by putting a duck in the water to which a detergent had been added. The wetting agent caused the oily feathers of the duck to attract water; the duck sank to the bottom of the tank and would have drowned if they hadn’t taken it out.”

Ed Cortland looked at Dr. Dixon. “Then you think that Ives—”

“I think,” Dr. Dixon said, “that Lawrence Ives might have gone down to his boat, cut small openings in those kapok cushions, and filled both of them with powdered detergent. Then he might have punched holes in the covers with that icepick and put small pieces of tape over the cuts to keep the kapok from working out. In the event of an ‘accident,’ they would have to rely on the life preservers. And if Mrs. Ives can’t swim...”

Dr. Dixon left the sentence significantly unfinished.

“Good heavens!” Cortland said. “That clipping was about a swimming accident."

Dr. Dixon nodded. “Exactly. Suppose you were going swimming where you expected an accident to take place. Where would you go?”

“What do you mean?”

“Not out here in the main channel where a fishing boat might come by in time to perform a spectacular rescue. You’d go out where you would have privacy. Remember when we came around that stretch, we left a long sweep of water behind us back from the main channel. It’s just a hunch, Ed, and time is running out—”

Corporal Ed Cortland swung the boat in a sharp turn.

Lawrence Ives stopped the motor of the boat and smiled at his wife. “This is so beautiful, darling,” he said, “let’s just sit here and admire the scenery.”

Slowly the boat lost headway until the waves of the churning wake became gentle ripples; then the placid calm of the lake surrounded them.

“Not quite calm enough for the reflections to be clear,” Ives said, “but the air is still and beautiful.”

They sat in silence for a while, and then Nan slipped her hand confidingly into Larry’s. “I’m so completely happy,” she said. “I never knew what a difference being in love could make.”

“Neither did I,” Larry said absently.

The minutes passed. Each was absorbed with thoughts. Nan was soaking in the beauties, basking in the warmth. Larry was carefully studying the lake, the shoreline, and the almost imperceptible drift.

He lit a cigarette and tossed the match overboard. The distance between the match and the boat widened, despite the fact that the boat seemed to remain stationary. It was as though some mysterious force had started moving the match away from the boat.

“Let’s take a swim,” Ives suggested suddenly.

“We didn’t bring our suits,” Nan protested.

“Out here, we don’t need them,” Ives said. “Let’s jump in and—”

“But, Larry, I don’t swim very well.”

“I know you don’t, but you don’t need to,” he assured her. “We’ll take our cushions along. They’re life preservers, you know. There’s no one out here to see us. Look at that water. Isn’t it irresistible?”

It took only a little more persuasion; then she slipped out of her clothes and went over the side.

Ives tossed her a cushion from the rear seat, stripped, took the other cushion, and jumped overboard.

They splashed about in the water as gaily as children.

Ives surreptitiously watched the boat. It was drifting just as he had expected. Now he was in a foolproof position. If some boat came along and rescued them, they could tell the story of an ordinary boating mishap. No significance would ever be attached to it. If, on the other hand, no boat came along... In a short time Lawrence B. Ives would be ready once more to enjoy a period of complete freedom and relaxation.

Oddly enough, the thought of being free again did not excite him so much as it had on previous similar occasions. As he had watched Nan slip into the water, there had been a sharp stab of reluctance at the thought of losing her. It was not a pang of conscience; Lawrence Ives had no conscience. It was just that he realized that what Nan had said about being in love was true.

With a self-discipline that came from rigid training, he turned his mind to the insurance, and to the thoughts of the luxury and the variety it would afford him. It was at that moment that Nan noticed the boat.

“Look how far we’ve come, Larry,” she cried.

“Good heavens!” Ives said. “We haven’t moved! It’s the boat that’s drifting! There must be a wind. Stay right here and cling to the cushion, darling. Hold it tight against you. I’m going after the boat.”

“Can you catch it?” she asked.

“I think so,” he assured her. “I’ll put my cushion under my chest and swim. I think I can make it. In any event, the cushion will keep me afloat and you’ll be perfectly safe waiting right here. I’ll get the boat and bring it back.”

He swam away without once looking back.

Cortland piloted their boat back to the bend in the river.

“Now veer off to the left. Let’s try that broad expanse up there,” Dr. Dixon suggested. He moved up to the bow to study the situation with his glasses.

Suddenly he called, “Over there to the right, Ed. That looks like Ives’s boat.”

“I can’t see it,” Ed shouted above the roar of the motor.

“It’s off to the right. You can’t see it without the glasses. Move over a little. Steady. There you are. Hold it right on this course.”

Dr. Dixon braced himself, holding the binoculars to his eyes. The boat surged ahead, making only fair speed with its small motor.

After a while Cortland shouted, “I can see it now, Doc. What do you make out?”

Dr. Dixon was silent for a moment; then he moved back to where Cortland was at the motor. “There’s no one in it, Ed,” he said grimly. “It’s drifting with the slight breeze, but I can’t see anyone.”

Corporal Cortland’s lips tightened. “When that guy tells his story it had better be good,” he muttered.

Dr. Dixon began turning his head, sweeping the binoculars across the water. Suddenly he reached over to grasp Cortland’s arm.

“Turn it back to the left, Ed. Someone’s in the water.”

“Where?”

“Swing it around! Over to the left... Not quite so far. Keep going.”

A little over three minutes later, Ed slowed the boat next to the head and shoulders of Mrs. Lawrence B. Ives.

“You need help?” Dr. Dixon called.

“Yes, yes. Oh please help him,” she sobbed. “My husband, my husband!”

“Come on aboard. Here, let me give you a hand,” Dr. Dixon said.

“I’m... I have no suit...

“I’m a doctor,” Dixon reassured her. “We have a coat you can put around you. Come on.”

They helped her aboard and Dr. Dixon covered her with a coat.

"What happened?” Dr. Dixon asked.

Her eyes were dark with panic.

“Larry,” she said. “My husband. Oh, you must find him! You must! He’s in the lake near here somewhere. He took off after our boat, and then I heard him calling and calling and then I didn’t hear him any more. I tried to push my cushion through the water, but—”

“Take it easy now, take it easy,” Corporal Cortland said. “Tell us exactly what happened.”

“We stopped the boat and went swimming, and there was a current or a wind or something, and the boat started drifting. I’m not a good swimmer. Larry isn’t a strong swimmer, but he thought he could take after the boat. He told me to hang onto my life preserver and not let go of it no matter what happened.”

Dr. Dixon and Corporal Cortland exchanged glances.

First, they went to the empty boat. Dr. Dixon picked up Nan Ives’s clothes. The men turned their backs while she dressed. Then they started combing the water carefully, covering every inch. They retrieved the kapok cushion to which the woman had been clinging. There was no sign of the other cushion.

And there was no sign of Lawrence B. Ives.

They searched for two hours before they reluctantly admitted defeat. Dr. Dixon, with the painstaking attention to detail of a trained criminologist, had made cross-bearings showing the exact location of the tragedy. With Ives’s boat in tow, they headed toward Cottonwood Cove.

Mrs. Ives was inconsolable. “Why, oh, why, did that have to happen to us?” she said. “We were so happy, so wonderfully, deliriously happy; and now—”

Again Dr. Dixon exchanged significant glances with Cortland. “Just bear up, ma’am,” the Corporal said. “It’s tough, all right, but time heals all wounds.”

At Cottonwood Cove they organized a searching party. The wife of one of the owners fixed Nan Ives up in a chair on the cool porch of the luxurious floating dock. Dr. Dixon sat with her for a while, talking quietly, consoling her.

He and Corporal Cortland held a brief conference before going out to join the searching party.

“Get this straight, Ed,” Dr. Dixon said. “She’s never to know about any of this. Let her have the memory of a perfect marriage.”

“Who do you think is going to tell her?” Cortland asked.

“I was afraid you might have ideas,” Dr. Dixon admitted.

“I’m not that dumb,” Cortland protested. “It’s better for her to spend the rest of her life being true to the memory of one of nature’s noblemen than to go back to being a wallflower.”

Dr. Dixon laughed. “She may have been a wallflower when Ives married her, but she has turned into an orchid now. With a face and figure like hers it won’t be long before a string of eligible males will be trying to make her forget the tragedy that made her a wealthy widow.”

“Wealthy?” Cortland repeated, and his eyebrows raised.

Dr. Dixon nodded. “Mrs. Ives mentioned that she and her husband had joint insurance policies and joint bank accounts — all payable to the survivor. It was her idea, not that she ever thought of personal gain. She wanted them for the protection of their future children.”

Dr. Dixon shook his head. “She seems to have outwitted him all around. But what puzzles me is how Ives happened to grab the wrong life preserver. Evidently, he put detergent in only one cushion. How the devil did he make the mistake?”

He frowned suddenly. “Do you suppose she could have switched the cushions?”

Cortland shook his head. “I did,” he admitted. “When we were down looking over the boat last night.”

Dr. Dixon stared at him. “Do you mean to say you knew what Ives had in mind?”

“Hell, no,” Cortland confessed. “I just swapped those cushions around as a matter of principle. Just good old police routine. I knew we were dealing with a crook and I acted automatically. It is an axiom of police procedure — never let a crook leave a setup!”