Murder Plus: True Crime Stories From The Masters Of Detective Fiction

Since his death in 1977, Jim Thompson has been rediscovered by a legion of readers, many of whom never read crime novels before, and by filmmakers who have seen fit to adapt five of his books to the screen: Pop. 1280 (filmed as Coup de Torchon), A Hell of a Woman (filmed as Serie Noire), The Grifters, After Dark My Sweet, and The Kill Off, having previously adapted The Getaway and The Killer Inside Me during Thompson’s lifetime. Perhaps in response to his newfound fame, some mystery critics have tried to dent his armor. They’ve pointed to his plot defects, and quickly dispatched, carelessly written chapters, and his use of the same themes over and over. And while some of these complaints are true, Thompson still commands our attention. Why? For starters, because nowhere else does one find this monstrous vision and laconic wit. Nor does one often come across such a sad bunch of pathetic heroes — a drawling, schizophrenic Texas sheriff, a door-to-door salesman, and a third-rate con man, to name but a few. But it is his formal experiments that truly separate him from the pulp crowd. His novel, The Criminal, shifts points-of-view, Rashomon style, and A Hell of a Woman uses an outlandish split narration. Robert Polito suggests in his introduction to Fireworks: The Lost Writings of Jim Thompson, that as-told-to stories such as the one before you now played a major role in his developing this double-voicing mechanism, for they, too, rely upon it (this particular one was told to him by Chester Stacey, Evidence Officer, La Tumara County, Texas). I agree. But in the often shadowy and contradictory life of Jim Thompson one mystery can be put to rest: he did not publish his first story in True Detective at the age of fourteen, as has often been written, but in 1936, when he was twenty-nine.

Case of the Catalogue Clue

At approximately 6:30 on the morning of August 6th, I was awakened from a deep sleep to find my wife shaking me by the shoulder.

“Get up, Chet. Sheriff Carter just called. He wants you to come out to the Parker-Kern Hotel right away.”

When Sheriff Isaac R. Carter was in a hurry there was good reason for haste. Of the old school of frontier peace officers, he was one of those calm, drawling Westerners who find their own leisurely pace still adequate for a speeding world.

I was flinging on my clothes before the next words were out of my wife’s mouth: “Mr. Trumbull has been killed!”

“What?” I paused in the act of tying a shoelace. “William Lake Trumbull?”

“That’s what Sheriff Ike said.”

“An accident of some kind?”

“No. Sheriff Ike said he’d been murdered.”

I didn’t waste time with any more questions. Jamming on my hat I raced out of the house to my car and headed for the hotel.

William Lake Trumbull was the man most responsible for changing La Tumara, the seat of the county of the same name, from a sleepy, cattle-country village into one of the busiest small cities in Texas. He had first appeared in La Tumara in the late twenties with a rickety drilling-rig and a strong conviction that there was oil in the neighborhood — and very little else. He was not a particularly likable man, but he had the rare trait of inspiring confidence. He was able to persuade several ranchers to finance the drilling of a well on a share basis. Sixty days after operations began, he struck oil.

The well was profitable but not a large producer. Hence, Trumbull was able to buy up a great deal of land in the section at a very reasonable figure. He then drilled the well a few hundred feet deeper, striking an oil sand that produced ten times the quantity of the shallower one. Naturally, his associates and the other landowners of the neighborhood felt that they had been tricked, but there was no legal measure they could take against him. Trumbull formed a stock company, drilled one well after another, and eventually built a refinery on the outskirts of the city. At the time of his death he must have counted his wealth in the millions.

The Parker-Kern Hotel is three miles northwest of the city. It was built in the wake of the oil boom and is patronized mainly by executives in the business and wealthy vacationists. As I parked my car a group of golfers came out of the lobby and headed toward the velvet-smooth links; and I heard cries of merriment coming from the swimming pool in the patio of the building. Apparently, the guests of the hotel had not been told of the murder in their midst.

The room clerk, with whom I had a speaking acquaintance, directed me to Trumbull’s room on the fifth floor, and a minute or two later Sheriff Carter admitted me. He was alone in the room but in the one connecting I could hear his deputy, Joe Todd, talking to someone in a low voice.

“Well, Sheriff?” I greeted him.

He gestured soberly. “Just got here myself, Chet. Look around. There’s not much I can tell you that you can’t see.”

I looked around as I unpacked my camera and other paraphernalia. It was a conventional hotel room of the better class. But with its furnishings all resemblance to the normal and conventional ended.

On the far side of the room William Trumbull sat slumped forward in an easy chair, his fingers almost touching the deep pile of the carpet. A pool of blood spread in front of him, over and around his feet. The top of his head was literally caved in. At his side lay a reading lamp, obviously the murder weapon. Blood and bits of hair still adhered to its heavy copper base.

Whoever killed him had also, apparently, robbed him. Business papers and clothes were scattered from one end of the room to the other. Every drawer of the bureau and dresser had been pulled open. The mattress lay halfway off the bed. The telephone stand, a few feet to the right and in front of the body, had been knocked over, and the telephone with the receiver off the hook lay on the floor. Even the carpet had been turned up in places by the murderer’s search.

“This is just the way you found the room?” I asked.

Sheriff Carter nodded. “I did pull the plug on the radio, but I didn’t touch the dials. It was blaring away so loud I couldn’t hear myself think.”

“That’s all right. What about the phone?”

“That’s the way I found it. I’ve had the operator plug out the connection on this room.”

I “dusted” and examined the reading-lamp but, as I had feared it would be, the effort was wasted. There were any number of fingerprints around the bloodstained base and the shade; but the tubular gooseneck, by which it must have been swung, had been wiped clean.

While I was taking the last of the many photographs necessary in such cases, Dr. E. E. Hutchinson, the autopsy physician, arrived. He expressed a tentative opinion that Trumbull had been dead little more than an hour, and that death had been almost instantaneous. He confirmed our belief that the lamp had been the murder weapon.

Following Dr. Hutchinson’s examination, Sheriff Carter and I inspected the body. Much to our surprise we discovered that the murdered man’s wallet, containing $411, was intact. Moreover, his expensive watch still reposed in his vest pocket.

Carter pushed back his hat. “Doesn’t look like robbery was the motive, does it, Chet?”

“Not for money, anyway,” I agreed. “Who discovered the murder?”

“Mr. Durkin, a business associate of Trumbull’s.” Carter jerked his head toward the connecting door. “Let’s go talk to him. He should be able to answer some questions by now.”

Samuel E. Durkin was lying on the bed in the adjoining room. A handsome, dark-haired man of about forty-five, he was smiling rather weakly at some pleasantry Deputy Sheriff Todd had made in an effort to take his mind from the tragedy.

Upon our entry he sat up and declared he was able and anxious to help us in any way that he could.

“When did you first learn of the murder?” I began.

“At a few minutes past 6 — perhaps 6:15.”

“How do you place the time?”

“I was talking to New York at 6 or a little after — it would be two hours later there, of course. And I must have talked about ten minutes. Almost as soon as I hung up the hotel operator rang back and asked me if I would look in Mr. Trumbull’s room. She said his telephone seemed to have been knocked over, and she was afraid he might have had an accident of some kind. I looked in, and—” He paused, gesturing toward the murder room.

“Was this connecting door unlocked between your rooms?”

“Yes.” Durkin seemed suddenly uncomfortable. “As a matter of fact, Trumbull and I were talking together this morning.”

“At what time?”

“Well — it was a few minutes after we got up. We both had calls for 5:30. We were catching the 6:30 plane for the East.”

“How long did you talk?”

“Not very long. Two or three minutes at the most.”

“Did you hear any commotion in there after you left?”

“I could hear the radio faintly, nothing else. These walls and doors are practically sound-proof, you know.”

Sheriff Carter cleared his throat. “Do you know of anyone who might have murdered Trumbull?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Your own relations were entirely friendly with him?”

“Certainly!” Then, as the sheriff stared at him thoughtfully, Durkin dropped his eyes and a wry smile came to his lips. “All right,” he admitted a little sheepishly, “we weren’t friendly. He’d defrauded me out of almost every cent I had. I tried to get him to square up this morning, and when he refused I called my attorney in New York.”

“Suppose you tell us the whole story,” Sheriff Carter suggested.

Durkin nodded soberly. “I retired from the retail drug business about three years ago because of ill health, but I wasn’t satisfied to sit around the rest of my life with no financial interests. A friend introduced me to Trumbull, and the next thing I knew I’d invested just about all my capital with him. It amounted to $85,000, to be exact. Well, I never received the return that I should, and these last few months I got nothing at all. I had what is known as a divided interest in the Trumbull properties. It was in certain specific wells, not the entire property. Trumbull tried to tell me the wells I was interested in had to be shut down indefinitely. Said they’d been overproduced and unless they got a rest they’d be ruined. That sounded pretty fishy to me, and I insisted on coming down here and looking around.

“I got an entirely new light on Trumbull from the people around here. I found that he’d pulled these shakedowns before, and I told him he wasn’t going to get away with it with me—”

Sheriff Carter held up his hand. “Just what was it he was trying to get away with?”

“Why, he was going to make my investment so unprofitable that I’d be glad to sell at any price!” Durkin’s voice rose indignantly. “He actually had the nerve to offer me $10,000 for it! And he had my hands tied. He’d kept controlling interest in those wells, and had the say-so about their operation.”

Carter shook his head sympathetically, and glanced at me. I arose and picked up the telephone. Without lifting the receiver, I walked as far as the cord would allow me toward the other room. At the connecting door I was brought to a halt. I could stand on the threshold of the other room but could not enter it without releasing the telephone.

Durkin was watching me anxiously.

“It looks like you’re in the clear, Mr. Durkin,” I said. “Providing, of course...”

“You can check my story with the telephone operator,” he offered.

“We’ll do that, of course,” I nodded. “One thing more. Was the hall door of Trumbull’s room unlocked?”

Durkin hesitated. “Well — I don’t know whether it was or not. It easily could have been, though. We were both expecting the bellboy to come up after our baggage.”

“It was unlocked when I got here, Chet,” the sheriff added.

Durkin readily agreed to fingerprinting, although, to tell the truth, I could see little point in it. Obviously, he and Trumbull had been in and out of each other’s rooms throughout the week they had been stopping at the hotel. Moreover, no matter how angry he might have become with Trumbull, he couldn’t have killed him while he was talking over the telephone.

Leaving him with the admonition to remain in town until the affair was cleared up, Sheriff Carter, Todd, and I went back into the other room. There, I saw something that had evaded me on my first inspection.

The reading lamp with which the murder had been committed did not belong on the writing desk or radio as I had first supposed. There was no outlet for it on that side of the room, the side on which Trumbull had been murdered. The only outlet for it was on the reading-stand near the connecting door.

Todd and Carter were quick to seize on this fact.

“Whoever did it,” Todd pointed out, “had to pick the lamp up over here, walk across the room, get behind Trumbull, and then hit him over the head.”

“And Trumbull was too smart a man to sit there and wait for it to happen,” mused Carter. “He’d have put up a fight or hollered or tried to get away. Probably all three.”

“Maybe he was asleep.”

“He’d just got up; barely finished dressing. And he was listening to the radio.” The sheriff shook his head. “No. Trumbull must have seen what was happening, but for some reason he wasn’t alarmed by it.”

“Which poses quite a problem,” I said. “If it was someone he knew — Durkin or practically any of his former associates — he would have been alarmed. On the other hand, if it wasn’t anyone he knew — well, he’d certainly never let a stranger pull anything like that.”

Carter slapped his thigh suddenly. “One of the hotel employees! One of them could have found an excuse to move the lamp, and Trumbull wouldn’t have thought anything of it!”

“Let’s go!” I said.

Todd was left to guard the room and supervise the removal of the body. Carter and I caught the elevator for the basement.

I should say here that the management of the hotel in general and Mr. J. E. Parker, resident manager, in particular, gave us the utmost cooperation throughout our work on the case. At the sheriff's request, Mr. Parker had detained the night employees of the Parker-Kern until they could be questioned, and they were now waiting for us in one of the locker rooms.

Miss Nina Fair, of 3457 Burk Street, was the night operator. She confirmed Durkin’s statement that both he and Trumbull had had 5:30 calls.

“The keys are right together on the board, and I rang them both at the same time,” she declared. “Mr. Durkin answered first, then Mr. Trumbull.”

“You’re positive it was Mr. Trumbull?”

“Why... who else could it have been?”

Sheriff Carter hesitated. “Well,” he drawled, at last, “it could have been Durkin. Their rooms connect. I’m not saying that it was him, and all this is in strict confidence. But—”

“I know Mr. Trumbull’s voice.” The girl was positive. “Anyway, Mr. Trumbull and Mr. Durkin were both on the wire at the same time.”

“But you said Mr. Durkin answered his phone first.”

“I don’t mean when I first called them,” said Miss Fair. “It was a couple of minutes afterward. Right after Mr. Trumbull hung up some lady called him from outside. I connected her right away, but she hung up as soon as he answered, and Mr. Trumbull accused me of cutting them off. While I was trying to explain, Mr. Durkin picked up his receiver and put in a call to New York.”

There could be no doubting that kind of testimony.

“Do you know who the lady was who called Mr. Trumbull?”

“No, I don’t.”

“What time was it when Durkin started talking to New York?”

“It was 6:02 when I finally got his party for him. He talked until 6:10.”

“Do you know what the conversation was about?”

“I know he was talking to his lawyer, and it was about suing Mr. Trumbull.” The girl colored slightly. “I don’t listen in on calls, of course; I just cut in a few times to see if he was still talking. You see, the signal lights don’t always work as they should on these long-distance calls, and I was worried about Mr. Trumbull’s phone being knocked over. So—”

“So you wanted to tell Mr. Durkin about it as soon as he was through,” Carter concluded, soothingly.

“Yes, sir.”

“One more question,” I said. “After Trumbull’s phone was knocked over, did you hear any sounds of scuffling or anything of that kind in his room?”

Miss Fair shook her head. “No — just the radio and—” Her voice trailed off thoughtfully.

“And what?”

“I heard the door open and close. The hall door.”

Sheriff Carter pounced on this. “How do you know it was the hall door? Why couldn’t it have been the connecting door?”

“Because on cutting into Mr. Durkin’s wire I would have heard the radio going in Mr. Trumbull’s room if the connecting door had been open. I had the cords up on both rooms and I switched from one to the other in just a fraction of a second. I couldn’t listen in on both rooms at the same time but it was so quick that it might just as well have been.”

The room clerk, Frank E. Corbert, who lived at the hotel, was not able to add greatly to our store of information. He had remained behind the desk all night and knew nothing of the crime until Durkin called him. According to Corbert, there had been a number of people going to and fro through the lobby during the last hour of his shift, from 5:30 to 6:30. Many of the guests of the Parker-Kern liked to get in a round of golf, some swimming or horseback riding before the day became too warm. Corbert would not pretend to remember who they were. He did declare that no one had checked out of the hotel.

Harry Knox, of the Cuyamaca Rooms, 119 East 4th Street, was the night elevator operator. A smiling middle-aged man, he had been crippled since birth and could not walk without assistance. He had left his car only once during his shift — for his relief. He “supposed” that he had taken several people to and from Trumbull’s floor between 5:30 and 6:30. He named two of them, but subsequent investigation proved them entirely blameless in the affair.

The remaining night employees, with the exception of those who worked in the coffee-shop and whose duties confined them there, were the lobby porter and the two bellboys. The porter, as practically every other employee could testify, had been occupied in the lobby all night, and had been too busy to be interested in the pleasure-hunting guests.

The attitude of the two bellboys was somewhat puzzling. I will not say that they were secretive or uncooperative, but certainly they were relieved when their interviews were over. They had a record of the guests they had waited on between 5:30 and 6:30, but that, of course, was only a partial list of those who had been up and around; and it was incredible that a murderer would have sought the services of anyone who might later have an opportunity to identify him.

Neither boy had visited Trumbull’s or Durkin’s room during the shift. Instructions had been left from the previous watch for one of them to pick up the baggage from those rooms at 6:20. But by that time the murder had been announced, and the pick-up had never been made.

Leaving my car behind for Deputy Todd’s use, I rode back into town with Sheriff Carter.

“Well, Chet, it doesn’t look like we’ve made much headway.”

“Not unless those pictures show something,” I admitted. “Frankly, I don’t know what it would be, though.”

“Neither do I. There might be something in the call Trumbull had from that woman this morning. From what the operator told us, it sounded like she just wanted to make sure Trumbull was in his room.”

“And when she found out that he was she came up and murdered him? That could be. But we can’t trace the call.”

“She might not know that. I suggest we drop a story in the paper to the effect that we know who she is and that she’ll save a lot of trouble for herself by coming in voluntarily.”

“It’s worth a try,” I told him.

Stopping at the plant of the La Tumara Tribune, we found the editor-publisher, J. Lee Rowan, busily engaged in getting out an extra on Trumbull’s murder. Naturally he had little information beyond the bare fact that the millionaire oil-man had been killed, and he welcomed the chance to run the story about the mysterious phone call. While he was talking with Carter, I went back to the photographic laboratory at the rear of the shop.

As a daily newspaper and the owner of the largest job-printing plant in the country, the Tribune could afford a much greater investment in photographic equipment than the sheriff's department. I had an improvised darkroom and other essentials in my home; but Mr. Rowan had placed their facilities at my disposal and frequently I used them. In return for this courtesy, we made available to them such of our pictures as were news.

L. A. “Red” Craig, the photographer, promised to develop the films and send them over to the sheriff's office at once.

“Now, I really am in a hurry today, Red,” I told him. “Don’t waste time in pulling any tricks on me.”

“Certainly not, Chet,” he said solemnly. But there was a twinkle in his eye.

Red and I had practically grown up together in La Tumara, and he seldom lost an opportunity to play a practical joke on me. On one occasion, which I remember particularly well, he superimposed the portrait of a bathing beauty upon a picture I had taken of a wrecked car. He did not change the negative, of course, and the only harm done was the temporary shock to my nervous system.

Since it was now mid-morning and neither Sheriff Carter nor I had eaten, I ran into a restaurant on the way back to the courthouse and got a carton of coffee and a few sandwiches. We were just sitting down to eat in the sheriff's office when the phone rang.

He picked up the receiver, talked for a moment, then motioned for me to take the extension phone.

J. E. Parker, the manager of the Parker-Kern Hotel, was on the wire. “I’ve just been talking to those two bellboys you interviewed this morning. I find they concealed something they should have told you.”

“Yes?” There was a snap to Sheriff Carter’s voice.

“One of our day bellboys had arranged with them to come on shift early so that he could carry down Mr. Trumbull’s baggage. It seems that he waited on Mr. Trumbull regularly, and he could get a much bigger tip than they could. Of course, the hotel doesn’t approve of mixing shifts for such reasons, and the boys were afraid they might be fired. But when they got to thinking it over—”

“Where is this other boy?” Carter interrupted. “Is he on duty now?”

“Well, he should be. According to the time-clock, he punched in at 5:50 this morning. And his street clothes are still in his locker. But no one has seen him — or remembers seeing him. Apparently he dressed in, and got out of, the locker room before any of the other boys got down.”

“Don’t you have a man on duty at your service entrance?”

“We do. But he’s principally concerned in seeing that everyone who comes in punches the clock. After they’re once in and in uniform he just watches to see that no hotel property is carried out. Our employees have to use the rear entrance all day in the course of their work.”

Sheriff Carter groaned audibly. “What about the night elevator operator, Harry Knox? If this boy had gone to Trumbull’s floor wouldn’t Knox have seen him?”

“Not necessarily. The boy could have used the stairs. More than likely, however, he would have borrowed the service elevator. The operator doesn’t come down to work until 6:30; employees use the front car at night.”

Mr. Parker gave the boy’s name as Jack Sibbons and his residence as 453 South Main Street.

Leaving our food almost untouched, Carter and I sped the few blocks across town to the address. It was in one of the dingier sections of the city, bordering on the business district. Once the home of a pioneer rancher, it had, in recent years, been converted into a rooming house. The proprietor was Mrs. Olaf Walling, the wife of a refinery company employee.

“Jack left for work at 5:40 this morning,” she stated. “I looked at the clock when I heard him go out because he and Olaf usually left about the same time and I thought, perhaps, Olaf was late. About 6:15 he came back in his uniform; said he’d forgotten to send his washing to the laundry. He ran upstairs, and came down a minute or two later with a suitcase. He put it in his car and drove off, and that’s the last I saw of him.”

“Do you know what laundry he patronizes?” I asked.

“Yes. But I’m pretty sure he didn’t go there. I looked in his room a while ago, and everything’s gone that was worth taking. Fortunately, I’d collected my rent in advance.”

A brief inspection of Sibbons’s room revealed that he undoubtedly did not intend to return. Nothing had been left behind but a pair of worn-out socks and a few magazines.

Using Mrs. Walling’s telephone, Sheriff Carter dispatched a pick-up request to the State Highway Patrol. Largely due to Mrs. Walling, he was able to give a minute description of the suspect and his car, and it seemed certain that it would be only a matter of time until he was picked up.

The “extra” issue of the Tribune was already on the streets as we drove him back to the office. And as we walked down the corridor of the courthouse, County Attorney Max Radford called to us from his quarters. We entered and he led us back to an inner room.

“This is Mrs. Brock, boys,” said Max, nodding toward a smartly dressed woman of about thirty. “She’s the lady who called Mr. Trumbull this morning.”

The woman patted her blonde hair uneasily. “All I did was call him. I never went near the hotel.”

“Suppose you tell us the whole story,” suggested Carter.

The woman gave her name as Jane Brock, and stated that she lived at the Empire Hotel at Main and Elm streets. She was a waitress in the Ramble Inn.

“Mr. Trumbull used to drop in at the Inn quite frequently when he was in town,” she began. “He was kind of flirty, like some men get at his age, and he was always kidding me about taking me back to New York with him. Well, yesterday he came in and, as I’d been having a little trouble on the job, I asked him if he really meant it about going to New York. He said he did, and I told him I’d think it over and let him know the first thing this morning.” She broke off, blushing. “It wasn’t like it sounds. I just thought I might be able to get a better job in New York.”

“So you called him this morning?” I prompted, after a moment’s pause.

“Yes. I was going to tell him I didn’t think I’d better go. When he answered the phone, though, he sounded so angry I got scared and hung up.”

Drawing us to one side, County Attorney Radford revealed that he had checked Mrs. Brock’s story with the night clerk at the Empire Hotel. He declared that she had called the Parker-Kern from her room at about 5:30, and that she had not left her room at the time he went off duty at 7 o’clock.

There was no reason for detaining her, and she was excused with our thanks.

Not more than an hour later, the highway patrol notified us that they were bringing in Jack Sibbons. He had been picked up less than forty miles away from the city while trying to repair a tire on his jalopy. He had only twenty dollars in money on him, and no valuable papers of any kind. He professed to be in ignorance of the fact that Trumbull had been murdered.

Around noon, the arresting officers, Mike Kindle and J. P. Rhodes, arrived in La Tumara with their prisoner. A rather slender youth of about twenty-two, he was still dressed in his bellboy uniform. He was so badly frightened that he was almost in hysterics.

Before he was well inside the office he was shouting accusations that he was being framed.

Carter sat looking at him silently, and Sibbons suddenly grew quiet. Sheriff Ike had that effect on people.

“That’s better,” he drawled, approvingly. “No one’s going to frame you, | Sibbons. We are going to ask you some questions. The answers to those questions will decide what’s going to happen to you. It’s up to you, not us. Understand?”

Sibbons gulped. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. Now, you went to Mr. Trumbull’s room this morning, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What time did you go up there?”

“I don’t know exactly. It was around 6 o’clock — earlier than I was supposed to have been there. I thought I’d help Mr. Trumbull do his packing and stall around a little and by that time it’d be all right for me to be seen in the lobby.”

“How did you get up there?”

“I walked. His room’s just on the fifth floor, you know.”

Carter nodded. “All right. What happened after you got there?”

“Nothing.” The youth’s glance wavered. “I decided maybe it would be better not to go in after all.”

The sheriff shook his head soberly.

“That’s foolish, Sibbons. It’s not helping your case to pretend you didn’t know about the murder. You must have known. If you didn’t, why did you try to leave town?”

“Well, I didn’t kill him, anyway.”

“We’re waiting to hear your story,” observed Carter.

“I... I just rapped on the door and walked in. That’s the way we usually do when it’s a man’s room. We don’t wait for them to answer the door.

“As soon as I looked in I knew something was wrong. The room was all torn up like someone had been searching it. Then, I saw Mr. Trumbull and I knew he was dead. I figured I’d better get out of there fast.”

“Why didn’t you report the crime?”

“I was afraid to. I didn’t have any business being there.”

“You’ve been in trouble with the law before, haven’t you?”

“No, I haven’t!” Sibbons protested.

Carter ignored the answer. “What was the other trouble about? Murder?”

“No! It was for — they said I stole a watch from a man at a place I was working at. But that’s a long time ago! I was only seventeen when that happened!”

“Why did you run away this morning? Can’t you see you made things worse for yourself?”

Sibbons started to speak; then, he bit his lip sullenly and remained silent.

“Have any reason to kill Trumbull?” Carter persisted.

The bellboy shook his head nervously. “No. Why should I?”

County Attorney Radford, who had been listening in on the interview, spoke up.

“You’ve got a bad case against you, Sibbons,” he said. “Let’s see how it stacks up. Point number one, you sneaked into the hotel and up to Trumbull’s room. Second, you were in there between the time he was killed and the time the body was found.”

“Point three, no one but an employee, such as yourself, could have taken that lamp and got behind Trumbull without putting him on guard. Four, you pulled a sneak on us. And finally, you have a record. Now, if you’ve got anything to say for yourself you’d better say it — and fast!”

The youth licked his lips nervously but said nothing.

Radford leaned above him and demanded, “Did you kill Trumbull?”

Sibbons shook his head in a frantic, scared way. His voice trembled. “No. No! I had no reason to kill him. Honest to God! Look, gents, gimme a break. Honest, I didn’t touch him. I got a record but I’m not a murderer. I... I want a lawyer!”

He stopped talking and no amount of questioning or prompting could get him to say more.

Carter and I saw him lodged in the county jail on a charge of suspicion of murder. We then had our long delayed breakfast and returned to the office.

While the sheriff thoughtfully rolled a brown-paper cigarette, I opened the package of photographs which had arrived from the Tribune and began to go through them. I came to the third one and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Then, feeling foolish, I threw down the print and reached for the telephone.

The sheriff looked at me inquiringly. “What’s up, Chet?”

“Just look at that! Red Craig’s been monkeying with our pictures again. I’m going to call him and pin his ears back.”

Carter inspected the print closely. “Red got that sense of humor from his father. The old man got shot in the leg for it, too, when he was about Red’s age—” His voice stopped and he pulled open a drawer and took out the magnifying glass we used in comparing fingerprints. After studying the photo for several seconds he laid it on the desk before me. “That picture hasn’t been doctored, Chet. It’s a picture of Trumbull’s room before the murder — either his room or one just like it. Red might have had an artist paint out the body with an air-brush but he couldn’t have put the room in order and show the bed made up.”

He was right. By this time I had cooled down enough to look closely. It was simply a picture of a room in the Parker-Kern Hotel, identical to the one occupied by the mining magnate. But how had it got in with the pictures I took of the crime scene?

I got Red Craig on the wire.

“Hi, Chet,” he said cheerfully. “How’d you like the body-snatching stunt?”

I started to tell him just what I thought of it when he stopped me.

“Wait a minute, Chet. Don’t get on the prod yet. Let me tell you about it. We’re getting out a new advertising folder for the Parker-Kern — we do all their job printing for them.

“Well, a few weeks ago I was up there shooting stuff for it, indoors, outdoors, view from the roof terrace, everything. This new piece is more like a college catalogue than a resort folder. No — let me finish telling you. One of the shots was of a deluxe bedroom, same as Trumbull’s. The management tries to make them look like guest rooms in a wealthy home but they’re all as much alike as peas in the pod. Every ash tray, every flower vase — they’re all alike. Lamps, bureau scarfs, do-dads, everything. Well, I just couldn’t resist giving you a ‘before and after’ view of your murder room. No hard feelings, I hope.”

“I wasn’t listening to Craig after this. Sheriff Carter had made a sudden pounce on another picture in the group and was comparing them with the lens, the smoke from his cigarette curling up one side of his face unheeded.

“Okay, Red,” I told him, “you owe me a dinner for that one. I’ve got to get busy.” I rang off.

The sheriff straightened up, took the corn-shuck butt from his mouth and dropped it deliberately in the cuspidor. He laid the magnifying glass away in the drawer and gathered up the pictures carefully into their envelope. His face was grim but the lines of uncertainty between his eyes had smoothed out. “I’ve got him, Chet.”

“You know who did it?”

“Yep. He’s a pretty fancy dodger and we’ve made a couple of bum casts and nearly got our rope on the wrong critter. But I’ve got him hog-tied and ready for the iron quicker than you can say ‘scat.’ ”

“You want me to bring Sibbons back for another talk?”

“Sibbons? Hell’s fire, son, he’s one of the mavericks that come near leading us clean off the trail. No. We’ll want to hang onto him as a witness but he’s not the killer.”

I still couldn’t realize what new element had entered the case to make the sheriff so positive. “You don’t mean that woman who got bashful at the last minute?”

Carter pulled his hat down a little further over his eyes. Then he reached back and flipped his short-barreled .45 from its leather pocket holster on his hip. He swung out the cylinder, checking the load, and returned it. “No. She was never in it at all.”

I followed him out of the office, knowing the old man had his own way of breaking a case, and was content to let him handle it in spite of my curiosity. When we got in the car all he said was, “Back to the Parker-Kern. And this is definitely the last time.”

Arriving at the hotel Carter and I made our way through the gala dinner-dance through to the manager’s office. He was in his usual evening conference with the house staff but on seeing us enter the anteroom he excused himself and came out at once.

“I’d like to talk to your housekeeper,” the sheriff announced quietly.

“She’ll be in her room at this hour, but I can have her down in a few minutes.”

“Don’t bother. I think I can find out what I need over the house phone.”

The old man wedged himself into one of the booths and spoke for perhaps two minutes. When he came out he nodded to me and we caught an elevator.

At the door of the murder room Carter knocked; it was opened by Deputy Joe Todd. Behind him I saw a straight chair tilted against the wall, looking strangely out of place in the lush setting. Beside it on the floor was a tray containing the dishes from Todd’s dinner and a large pot of coffee. “Nobody’s tried to get in, Sheriff,” Todd whispered. “Nothing’s been touched, either.”

“Fine, Joe. Let’s get your chair and the tray out in the hall. I want the room just the way it was. Durkin in his room there?”

“Unless he went out quietly. You want him?”

“Yes — to tell us about one thing in the arrangement of the room.”

Durkin seemed to have recovered entirely from the shock of sudden death striking so close to him. He was freshly shaved and wearing a dinner jacket. “I understand you’ve caught the murderer, Sheriff, and that congratulations are in order. I was sorry to hear that it was young Sibbons — he seemed like a decent kid. What on earth could have been his motive in bludgeoning the old man?”

“The motive for the killing is clear enough to me,” Carter said, drawing out the envelope of photographs. “What I’m interested in right now is neither why or how Trumbull was killed. I want to know where he was killed.”

Durkin frowned and looked at me but I simply shrugged and waited for Sheriff Ike to tell us more.

“You mean he was killed somewhere else and brought back here into the bedroom?” Joe Todd exploded.

“I didn’t say that. But this is a good-sized room. Tell me this, Mr. Durkin; that armchair where Trumbull was sitting when you found him — was that always in the same location? Ever since Trumbull moved into the room?”

Durkin frowned. “Now that you mention it, Sheriff, I seem to recall that it was somewhere else, but Trumbull wasn’t the kind of man to let anything stand in the way of his comfort. He’d have moved the bed into the middle of the floor if it suited him better that way.”

“I see. How long would you say the armchair has been over there?”

“Several days at least.”

The old peace officer nodded as if satisfied.

I found my own attention fastening on the armchair with its sinister dark splotches. Where the dead man’s body had rested was marked with a chalk outline on the upholstery, and two chalk ovals on the fleur-de-lis pattern of the rug showed where his feet had touched the floor.

“The thing that bothered me from the beginning,” Ike Carter mused, as if thinking out loud, “was why in thunder a man like Trumbull didn’t get the wind up when he saw the killer heading for him with a loose lamp. Any other sort of bludgeon might not be suspicious but the killer had to pick up that lamp, jerk out the plug, rip off the shade, up-end it and swing it at Trumbull’s head. Bellhops don’t come into a room at 6 in the morning and start monkeying with the lamps. Here, Joe — you go in and unlock the connecting door between this room and Mr. Durkin’s. I want to get another angle of view on this room.”

Joe went out the corridor door and reentered through the connecting door, the sheriff meanwhile having slipped off the catch from our side. Through the open door I could see the neighboring room, exactly like the one in which we stood.

“Now, then,” the sheriff continued, “let’s try to reconstruct this business. If I were to stand here, in this doorway, and Trumbull was sitting with his back to me — if that armchair was just reversed — I could hit him with a lamp or anything else. If I could get the lamp.”

Joe Todd was looking more and more bewildered. Durkin was blank and I must confess that I was still in the dark.

“However crazy that may sound I think it’s just the way the thing was done. I think Trumbull was sitting over here—”

“But the bloodstains!” I interrupted. “Look at that pool of blood. There’s not a drop over there where you’re standing!”

“That’s right, Chet. But look at these photographs.” He handed them to me. “Red Craig’s ‘before and after’ joke turned out to be the truth. These rooms are furnished alike and to specification. The housekeeper told me that just now. Look at the rug patterns in those two photos. All the flowers in one rug — the undisturbed room — point toward the windows. But the ones in here point back toward the door. Trumbull was moved after he died. But the killer moved the whole works — rug, chair, and body. He couldn’t quite get away with it because the legs of the bed are in the way and he didn’t have time. So he left the rug scrounged up that way and upset everything else in the room to keep it company. Whoever killed Trumbull stood in this doorway, where I’m standing now.”

Durkin snorted. “Obviously you are implying, Sheriff, that while I was talking on long distance, I calmly allowed someone to pass through my room and murder the man next door!”

Ike Carter leaned back against the door jamb. “You might. And then again you might be in it even deeper. You know what I think happened? I think Trumbull’s telephone was upset after he was killed. I think the killer took that long bureau scarf there and took a hitch around the base of the telephone with it — the end of it is creased like it had been tied around something. That way the killer could stand in your room, pick up your phone and start talking and, by giving the scarf a yank, upset the telephone in here.”

Durkin’s face had turned an ashy gray. “It’s insane! It’s the most idiotic thing I ever heard of! You said yourself that the — the person who did it would have to pick up the lamp first and Trumbull would have seen him and tried to defend himself. If you think I did it, what about the lamp?”

“I’m coming to that,” Carter went on, his voice a low, even drone. “Nobody touched Trumbull’s lamp until after he was dead.” The old man left his post by the connecting door and knelt beside the murder weapon, picking up the plug. “This lamp never came out of that base outlet over there. The metal of the plug prongs is soft. They’re scratched by the contacts in the base outlet. If we photograph these scratches and enlarge them, every base outlet in the hotel will be found to leave a different pattern on the prongs of a plug. Now, are you going to make us go to all that trouble of collecting the evidence or are you going to admit that you took your own lamp, from your own room, and beat Trumbull to death with it?”

Joe and I had been so absorbed with Ike’s analysis of the intricate modus operandi that Durkin managed to dash past both of us. In a split second he had vanished into his own room, slammed the door and bolted it.

Sheriff Ike crossed the room with a single bound. His .45 appeared in his gnarled right hand and the air of the bedroom jarred with the concussion as he fired a slug into the lock. His shoulder against the door sent it crashing in and we heard a sharp crack and a howl of pain.

When we got in Durkin was holding his right wrist. A little .25 Colt automatic lay on the floor. Sheriff Carter stood by easily, his right wrist braced against his hip, the muzzle of his revolver covering the cowering man.

“Get that little popgun, Joe, and then put the cuffs on him. Then you might tell the hotel doc to hurry up here. This fellow looks like he’s going to faint.”

Durkin did, indeed, seem on the point of collapse. When he had been handcuffed the sheriff pushed him back onto the bed and spread a blanket over him. “You ought to be glad this is 1939 and not 1879,” he told the trembling prisoner. “In the old days when two fellows had a falling out and settled it with artillery the one that came out alive was pretty sure of getting a square deal. But what our folks never did like was the kind of killer that would snake around and try to pin it on an innocent man. You’ll have your chance in court but I’m telling you that in the old days you’d have worn a rawhide necktie quicker than I can tell you about it.”

Durkin stopped trembling and suddenly sat up, his eyes gleaming. “He deserved killing! He beat me out of every cent I had. And he had millions!”

“Take it easy, son. You don’t, by law, have to say a word from here until they strap you into a chair.”

“I want to talk. I’ve got to. I’m guilty. I killed him. But it wasn’t planned beforehand. If I’d planned to kill him, I’d have used my own gun, wouldn’t I? Well, I didn’t. I went into his room this morning and tried to persuade him to do the right thing by me. I warned him that I was calling my attorneys and was going to start suit. He laughed at me. He admitted he’d swindled me but he’d kept within the law. I tried to plead with him but he turned the radio up and drowned me out. I ran back in here. Then I opened the door to try arguing with him and he was sitting there laughing at the ceiling in triumph. I snatched up my lamp and hit him!” The man’s breath was coming back and a little color returned to his lips.

“Everything else happened just the way you guessed it. I switched the lamps afterward. I tried to switch the rug and the old man with it. I couldn’t quite make it so I tore up the rest of the room and I rigged the telephone with the bureau scarf. The radio was still blasting away and I closed the door and left one corner of the scarf under it. I lay down on the floor while I was talking to New York and could just reach that corner under the door and I pulled it and upset the phone. I... I had to think fast. I didn’t figure anybody would be charged with it; I thought that it would be unsolved. All I wanted was time to get away.”

Taken before County Attorney Radford, Durkin unprotestingly signed a formal confession to the crime. He was lodged in the cell only recently vacated by the bellboy, Jack Sibbons.

On October 18th, 1939, in the District Court of Judge Robert Lee Arrowman, Samuel Durkin was allowed to enter a plea of guilty to a charge of manslaughter in the first degree. After the brief technicality of a trial, he was sentenced to twenty-five years’ imprisonment in the state penitentiary where he still remains.

Six months ago an ingenious jail-break plot was uncovered in the penitentiary. The details have never been made public but the warden has intimated that the brain of Samuel Durkin was behind it.