The D.A. Breaks a Seal

11

Rex Brandon was still at the courthouse when Selby tapped the ashes out of his pipe on the iron rail which bordered the flight of steps which led to the front door. The other county officials had gone home, but the janitor had not as yet locked the front doors for the night, and Selby climbed the long flight of stairs, looked with nostalgic longing at the double mahogany doors which opened into the courtroom where he had been through so many hard-fought legal battles.

Brandon was relieved to see him, but plainly worried. “Doug,” he said, “we’ve got a bear by the tail and we can’t let go.”

Selby glanced at his watch. “Getting along about dinnertime, Rex?”

“I suppose so,” Brandon said, “but sit down. You’ve got fifteen or twenty minutes. Light up your pipe and let’s talk things over.”

Selby settled comfortably in the chair, elevated his feet to the corner of the sheriff’s desk. The sheriff leaned back in his creaking swivel chair, rolled a cigarette, propped his own feet up in the middle of the desk. He grinned across through the friendly haze of tobacco smoke and said, “Seems like old times, Doug.”

Selby nodded.

For a moment, they smoked in silence, then Selby said, “You know, Rex, I have an idea that whole thing ties into this will-contest case that’s coming up for trial in the Superior Court tomorrow.”

Brandon shook his head and said, “We’ve got a bear by the tail, Doug.”

“Just what is it, Rex?”

“Well, we’ve found some hydrocyanic acid in a little bottle and a medicine dropper.”

“Where?”

“In that waiter’s room at the hotel,” Brandon said wearily. “A little room that he has down in the basement. And I don’t like it, Doug.”

“Any fingerprints on the bottle?” Selby asked. “Any druggist’s label, any...”

“That’s just the point, Doug. There isn’t a single fingerprint on the whole blamed bottle. There’s just the bottle and the medicine dropper. There isn’t a label on the bottle, nothing to show where he got it or how long he’s had it.”

“Looks to me like a plant,” Selby said.

Brandon nodded. “The way I figure it out is that if that man had wiped his own fingerprints off the bottle so that it couldn’t be connected with him, he wouldn’t have been foolish enough to have stuck it in the back of his suitcase under some old clothes. He’d have dumped the acid down the sink, washed out the bottle, scrubbed off all the fingerprints, and then thrown the bottle away somewhere. He had plenty of time.”

Selby nodded.

“Well, there you are,” Brandon said.

“Who found the bottle?”

“Otto Larkin and Carl Gifford. They went rummaging around the man’s room while I was trying to get something on this Fred Albion Roff. Of course when they found that bottle — well, you know how Larkin is. And Carl Gifford couldn’t wait. Soon as they identified the hydrocyanic acid, they rang up the Blade. Seen it?”

Selby shook his head.

“It just came out,” Brandon said wearily, “and you’d think they’d hung up a new world’s record solving murder cases. Now, the way I look at it, we’ve got this Farley, the waiter who took the breakfast up. He has a criminal record, and we’ve found a bottle of hydrocyanic acid in his room. That’s just enough circumstantial evidence to put us in a spot, but the way I see it, Doug, it ain’t enough to get a conviction. We haven’t any motive and I’m not so sure we can ever prove any motive. What’s more, Henry Farley has got old A. B. Carr as his lawyer, and you know what that means.”

“What does Carr say, now that you’ve discovered the acid.”

Brandon made a gesture of irritation. “You know Carr. He’s shocked. He’s deeply pained. It appears to him now that his client is the victim of a conspiracy. He doesn’t exactly come right out and say that the police are trying to frame his client, but if he can’t find some better explanation by the time he comes to trial, that’s what it’s going to be.”

Selby nodded.

“Any possible connection between this man, Roff, and Farley?”

“That’s the thing that bothers me,” the sheriff said. “Farley was born on the Pacific Coast, and apparently he never left the Pacific Coast. Fred Albion Roff is from the Middle West. He’s been out here twice before.”

“What was the reason for his trip this time?” Selby asked.

“Apparently it had something to do with an alimony settlement in Los Angeles. And I guess that’s all of it.”

“Then why did he come to Madison City?”

“Now you’re asking questions,” Brandon said. “We may get the answers to some of them within the next hour or two. I have the Los Angeles police working on the thing. Apparently he came here from Los Angeles, and apparently the business that took him West was business that had to do with an alimony settlement. He was representing a husband who had to pay monthly alimony. The woman lives in Los Angeles. From the evidence we have now, it looks as though the woman sort of wants to get married again and is holding off because she didn’t want to lose the alimony. The idea was that Roff was going to make her a lump-sum proposition. That’s what he was supposed to be working on. Anyway, he was in Los Angeles yesterday.”

“You mean Roff was.”

“That’s right. He came here on the early morning bus from Los Angeles. But the woman in the divorce case says he never even came near her. I don’t just understand it.”

“What have you found out about Roff?”

Brandon said, “He’s a lawyer. He is pretty well fixed, but somehow he doesn’t seem to stand too high in his community. He’s considered pretty slick. People don’t have too much confidence in him. He made a lot of his money out of investments. He was shrewd at them. He didn’t have a big practice, but all of the cases he did handle were big ones. The man had enough money so he could afford to pick and choose and — well, sort of putting two and two together from the way we get it over the long distance telephone, Doug, I gather that the rank and file of common people were just a little bit afraid of him. He was just a little too smart — sort of a local A. B. Carr on a penny-ante scale, if you get what I mean.”

Selby laughed and shook his head. “You still underestimate old A.B.C., Rex. That man is a genius, a past master of courtroom strategy. He...”

“He’s crooked as a dog’s hind leg,” Brandon interrupted.

“Probably he is,” Selby said, “but he’s a genius just the same.”

“I don’t care how smart a man is, if he ain’t honest,” Brandon said with finality, “that settles it with me.”

Selby said, “Old A.B.C. isn’t exactly dishonest, Rex. He simply has a certain code. He doesn’t care what his clients do. He just closes his eyes to that, but the probabilities are that as far as A.B.C. himself is concerned, you’ll never catch him doing anything that’s actually crooked.”

“You mean we’ll never catch him,” Brandon said bitterly, “and you may be right.”

Selby said, abruptly, “Rex, I wish you’d make a determined effort to trace those two people who got off the train, the two people who were wearing white gardenias. I can’t help but think that if we knew the histories of those two people and the reason Carr met them, we might get somewhere.”

“I’m working on it,” Brandon said, “but I’m not getting much support. Carl Gifford — well, he’s got his mind made up. He thinks he has the man who did the job, and it’s up to me to get the evidence that will enable him to go into court and get a conviction.”

“Why not put it up to Otto Larkin to get the evidence?” Selby asked, grinning.

Brandon snorted. “You know Larkin. He’s stuck his stomach out and is promenading up and down Main Street, telling everybody about how he didn’t let any grass grow under his feet. He went right down to make a quick search of that waiter’s room. He knew what he was looking for and he found it. As far as Larkin is concerned, he’s done his work and he’s out taking all of the credit. From now on, he’ll rest on his oars. That’s the thing that bothers me. If Gifford gets enough evidence to convict him, Larkin and Gifford will be strutting around. But if they don’t, they’ll throw me overboard. I’ll be the one that fell down on the job. That’s the worst of Gifford. He looks out for number one, and he’s an expert at passing the buck.”

“You can’t find where this Fred Albion Roff knew anything about the will-contest case, or had any connection with Hervey Preston or Martha Otley or...”

“Not a thing.”

Selby said, “Anita Eldon apparently stayed overnight in Los Angeles. It occurs to me that perhaps Roff was talking with her last night.”

“Could have been,” Brandon said. “It’s too early yet to go jumping at conclusions. I’m trying to find those two people who got off the train and...”

Brandon broke off as he heard the rapid tapping of high heels in the corridor. “Sounds like Sylvia,” he said.

Selby got up and opened the door.

Sylvia Martin’s eyes were sparkling with excitement. She didn’t waste time in greetings, but her hand squeezed Doug’s arm reassuringly. She said, “I’ve been working on Fred Albion Roff. You know, I’m local correspondent for one of the Los Angeles newspapers, and they’re interested in the thing. If they can make it big enough, they’re going to play up that white gardenia angle. You know the way they’ll do it, Doug.”

“I suppose so,” Selby said. “Headlines about the flower of death and that sort of stuff.”

“Not quite that bad,” she reassured him. “That’s the way it will get into the Sunday supplement, after six months. But anyway, the point I’m making is that they’re interested, and have gone to work, and they’ve given me something to go on.”

“What?” Brandon asked.

She said, “Last night, Fred Albion Roff was registered at the Palm Vista Hotel.”

“So that’s where he stayed,” Brandon said, taking his feet off the desk and reaching for a lead pencil. “I told the police to sort of check up on it. Did he have any visitors?”

“I don’t know,” Sylvia said, “but I do know one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“The record of his telephone bill shows that he rang up Madison City 6982 at eight forty-five and talked for fifteen minutes.”

Brandon whistled.

For a moment Selby didn’t get it. “Madison City 6982,” he repeated, glancing from Sylvia to Rex Brandon.

It was Rex Brandon who refreshed Doug’s memory. “That number,” he said, “is the number of Inez Stapleton’s law office.”

Selby found himself glancing incredulously from Brandon to Sylvia Martin.

Brandon dropped the end of his cigarette into a big brass cuspidor. “Guess we’ll see what she has to say,” he said grimly.

“But look here, Rex, Inez wouldn’t hold out anything in a murder case. If the man had talked with her...”

“Don’t be too sure,” Brandon said. “She’s a lawyer and she’s getting to be a good one. She’s mixed up in a will-contest case involving a million dollars and if there had been some telephone conversation that she wouldn’t want to get out because it would hurt the interest of her client, she’s just smart enough and determined enough to keep her mouth shut.”

Sylvia glanced significantly at Rex Brandon.

Brandon reached up and switched out the desk light. “Want to go, Doug?”

Selby shook his head.

Brandon said to Sylvia Martin, “I’ll let you know, Sylvia.”

“I wish you would. It’s my tip and I think I’m entitled to any story that comes out of it. The Los Angeles paper wants me to phone.”

Brandon nodded, “I’ll let you know.”

“You’re not going?” Selby asked.

She said somewhat wearily, “I want to find out what she has to say. My being there would be just like a red flag in front of a bull. We’d never find out anything if she thought I was going to get a story out of it.”

“Oh, I don’t think she feels quite that way,” Brandon said.

“I do,” Sylvia said.

There was a moment of silence. Selby looked at his watch, then he announced, “You’re going to dinner with me, Sylvia.”

Sylvia hesitated for just a moment, then said to Brandon, “We’ll be at that new steak house down on Oak Street, Rex. Will you let me know as soon as you find out?”

Brandon nodded.

“I simply can’t believe it,” Doug Selby muttered. “I was talking with Inez not over half an hour ago.”

Sylvia Martin’s silence was significant.