Million-Dollar Suitcase — Chapter 27

THE BLOSSOM FESTIVAL

Two hours sleep, bath, breakfast, and I started on my early morning run for the county seat.

Nobody else was going my way; but even at that hour, the road was full of autos, buggies, farm wagons, pretty much everything that could run on wheels, headed for the festival, all trimmed and streaming with the blossoming branches of their orchards.

These were the country folks, coming in early to make a big day of it;

orchardists; ranchers from the cattle lands in the south end of the county; truck and vegetable farmers; flower-seed gardeners; the Japs and Chinese from their little, closely cultivated patches; this tide streamed past me on my left hand, as I made my way to Worth and the jailer's office, trying with every mile I put behind me, to bolster my courage.

Why wasn't this shift of the enemy a blessing in disguise?

Let their setting of the hour for the murder stick, and wouldn't Worth's alibi be better than any we should have been able to dig up for him before midnight?

From time to time I was troubled by recollection of Barbara's crushed look from the moment they sprung it on us, but brushed that aside with the obvious explanation that her efforts in bringing Mrs. Bowman to speak out had just been of no use; surely enough to depress her.

Worth met me, fit, quiet, not over eager about anything.

They let us talk with a guard outside the door.

Once alone, he listened appreciatively while I told him of our interview with Cummings and Dykeman as fast as I could pile the words out.

"Nobody on earth like Bobs," was his sole comment.

"Never was, never will be."

"And now," I reminded him nervously, "there's the question of this alibi.

You went straight from the restaurant to your room at the Palace and to bed there?"

"No-o," he said slowly.

"No, I didn't." "Well--well," I broke in.

"If you stopped on the way, you can remember where.

The people you spoke to will be as good as the clerks and bell-hops at the Palace for your alibi."

He sat silent, thoughtful, and I added, "Where did you go from Tait's, Worth?"

"To a garage--in the Tenderloin--where they keep good cars.

I'd hired machines from them before."

"Oh, they knew you there?

Then their testimony will--" "I don't believe you want it, Jerry.

It only accounts for the half hour--or less--right after I left you; all I did was to hire a car."

"A car," I echoed vaguely.

"What kind of a car?

Hired it for when?"

"I asked them for the fastest thing they had in the shop.

Told 'em to fill it all round, and see that it was tuned up to the last notch.

I

wanted speed."

"My God, Worth!

Do you know what you're telling me?"

"The truth, Jerry."

His eye met mine unflinchingly.

"That's what you want, isn't it?"

"Where did you go?"

I groaned.

"You must have seen somebody who could identify or remember you?"

"Not a solitary human being to identify me.

Those I passed--there were people out of course, late as it was--saw my headlights as I went by.

But I was moving fast, Jerry.

I was working off a grouch; I needed speed."

"Where did you go?"

"Straight down the peninsula on the main highway to Palo Alto, made the sweep across to the sea, and then up the coast road.

I ran into the garage about dawn."

"No stops anywhere?"

He shook his head.

"And that's your alibi?"

"That's my alibi."

Worth looked at me a long while before he said finally, "Don't you see, Jerry, that the other side had all this before they encouraged Bowman to change his mind about when father was shot?"

I did see it--ought to have known from the first.

This was what they had back of them last night in Cummings' room; this explained the lawyer's smug self-confidence, Dykeman's violent certainty that Worth was a criminal.

A realization of this had whitened Barbara's face, set her lips in that pitiful, straight line.

As to their momentary chagrin over Bowman; no trouble to them to get other physicians to bolster any opinion he'd given.

Medical testimony on such a point is notoriously uncertain.

All the jury would want to know was that there could be such a possibility.

I sat there with bent head, and felt myself going to pieces.

Cummings was right--I was no fit man to handle this job.

My personal feelings were too deeply involved.

It was Worth's voice that recalled me.

"Cheer up, Jerry, old man.

Take it to Bobs."

Take it to Bobs--the idea of a big, husky old police detective running to cast his burden on such shoulders!

I couldn't quite do it then.

I

went and telephoned the little girl that I was doing the best I could--and then ran circles for the rest of the day, chasing one vain hope after another, and finally, in the late afternoon, sneaked home to Santa Ysobel.

Now I had the road more to myself; only an occasional handsome car, where the wealthy were getting in to the part of the festival they'd care for.

In the orchards near town where the big picnic places had been laid out with rough board tables and benches, seats for thousands, there were occasional loud basket lunch parties scattered.

All at once I was hungry enough to have gone and asked for a handout.

I went by back streets down to the house to get my mail.

There seemed no human reason that I should feel it a treachery to have Worth in jail at San Jose, and be able to walk into his house at Santa Ysobel a free man.

The place was empty; Chung had the day off, of course.

It was possible Worth's cook, even, didn't know what had happened to his employer.

Santa Ysobel had no morning paper.

In the confusion of the blossom festival, I ventured to guess that not more than a score of people did as yet know of the arrest.

Our end of town was drained, quiet; nobody over at the Vandeman bungalow; looking down at the Square as I made my sneak through, I had caught a glimpse of Bronson Vandeman, a great rosette of apricot blossoms on his coat lapel, making his speech of presentation to the cannery girl queen, while his wife, Ina, her fair face shaded doubly by a big flower hat and a blossom covered parasol, listened and looked on.

One of my pieces of mail concerned the Skeels chase.

If my men down there had Skeels, and Skeels was Clayte, it would mean everything in handling Cummings and Dykeman.

I took out the report and ran hastily through it; a formal statement; day by day stuff: "_Found Skeels and Dial at Tiajuana.

Negotiating to buy saloon and gambling house.

Arranged with Jefico for arrest of S. (Expense . ) Rurales took S. to jail.

(Expense, . 50) I interviewed S. , and he said he came here to open a business where he could sell booze.

D.

was his partner in proposition.

S.

knew nothing of bank affair.

Would waive extradition and come back to stand trial at our expense.

Interviewed D. He says combined capital of two is . , saved from S's business and D's miner's wages.

D.

said--_" Not much to show up with; but there were three photographs enclosed that I wanted to try on Cummings and Dykeman.

No telling where I'd find either, but the Fremont House was my best bet.

Getting back there through the crowd, I saw Skeet Thornhill in a corner drugstore, waiting at its counter.

I was afoot, having been obliged to park my roadster in one of the spaces set apart for this purpose.

I noticed Vandeman's car already there.

I lingered a minute on that corner looking down the slope that led to City Hall Square.

Tent restaurants along the way; sandwiches; hot dogs;

coffee; milk; pies; doughnuts.

Part way down a hurdy-gurdy in a tent began to get patronage again; the school children in white dresses with pink bows in their hair had just finished a stunt in the Square.

They and their elders were streaming our way, headed for the snake charmers, performing dogs and Nigger-in-the-tank.

In the midst of them Vandeman and his wife came afoot.

He caught sight of me, hailed, and when I joined them, asked quickly, glancing toward the drugstore entrance, "Worth come with you?"

I shook my head.

He made that little clucking sound with his tongue that people do when they want to offer sympathy, and find the matter hard to put into words.

A seller of toy balloons on the corner with a lot of noisy youngsters around him; the ka-lash, ka-lam of a mechanical piano further down the block; and young Mrs. Vandeman's staccato tones saying, "I tell Bron that the only thing Worth's friends can do is to go on exactly as if nothing had happened.

Don't you think so, Mr. Boyne?"

I agreed mutely.

"Well, I wish you'd say so to Barbie Wallace," her voice sharpened.

"She's certainly acting as though she believed the worst."

"Now, Ina," Vandeman remonstrated.

And I asked uncomfortably, "What's Barbie done?

Where is she?"

"Up at Mrs. Capehart's. In her room.

Doesn't come out at all.

Isn't going to the ball to-night.

Skeet said she refused to speak to Mr. Cummings."

"Is that all Skeet said?

Vandeman, you've told your wife that Cummings swore to the complaint?"

"Yes, but--er--there's no animus.

The executor of Gilbert's estate--With all the talk going around--If Worth's proved innocent, he might in the end be glad of Cummings' action."

"Oh, might he?"

Skeet Thornhill had hurried out from the drugstore, a package of medicine in her hand.

Her eyes looked as though she'd been crying; they flashed a hostile glance over the new brother-in-law, excellently groomed, the big flower favor on his coat, the tall, beautiful sister, all frilly white and flower festival fashion.

"_If_ Worth's proved innocent!"

she flung at them.

"Bronse Vandeman, you've got a word too many in when you say that."

"Just a tongue-slip, Skeeter," Vandeman apologized.

"I hope the boy'll come through all right--same as you do."

"You don't do anything about it the same as I do!"

Skeet came back.

"I'd be ashamed to 'hope' for a friend to be cleared of a charge like that.

If I couldn't _know_ he was clear--clear all the time--I'd try to forget about it."

"See here, Skeet," Ina obviously restrained herself, "that's what we're all trying to do for Worth: forget about it--make nothing of it--act exactly as if it'd never happened.

You ought to come on out to the ball with the other girls.

You're just staying away because Barbara Wallace is."

"I'm not.

Some damn fool went and told mother about Worth being arrested, and made her a lot worse.

She's almost crazy.

I'd be afraid to leave her alone with old Jane.

You get me and this medicine up home--or shall I go around to Capehart's and have Barbie drive me?"

"I'll take you, Skeeter," Vandeman said.

"We're through here.

We're for home to dress, then to the country club--and not leave it again till morning.

That ball out there has got to be made the biggest thing Santa Ysobel ever saw--regardless.

Come on."

The crowd swallowed them up.

Making for the Fremont House, I passed Dr. Bowman's stairway, and on impulse turned, ran up.

I found the doctor packing, very snappish, very sorry for himself.

He was leaving next day for a position in the state hospital for the insane at Sefton.

His kind have to blow off to somebody; I was it, though he must have known I had no sympathy to offer.

The hang-over of last night's drunk made emotional the tone in which he said, "After all, a man's wife makes or breaks him.

Mine's broken me.

I could have had a fine position at the Mountain View Sanitarium, well paid, among cultured people, if she'd held up her damned divorce suit a little longer."

"And as it is, you have to put up with what Cummings can land you with such pull as he has."

"I'm not complaining of Cummings," sullenly.

"He did the best he could for me, I suppose, on such short notice.

But a man of my class is practically wasted in a place of the sort."

I had learned what I wanted; I carried more ammunition to the interview before me.

I found Dykeman in his room, propped up in bed, wheezing with an attack of asthma.

A sick man is either more merciful than usual, or more unmerciful.

Apparently it took Dykeman the former way; he accepted me eagerly, and had me call Cummings from the adjoining room.

The lawyer was half into that costume he had brought from San Francisco.

He came quite modern as to the legs and feet, but thoroughly ancient in a shirt of mail around the arms and chest, and carrying a Roman helmet in his hand as though it had been an opera hat.

"Trying 'em on?"

Dykeman whispered at him.

Cummings nodded with that self-conscious, half-tickled, half-sheepish air that men display when it comes to costume.

His greeting to me was cool but not surly.

What had happened might go as all in the day's work between detective and lawyer.

"Just seen Bowman," was my first pass at them.

"I gather he's not very well pleased with the position you got him; seems to think it small pay for a dirty job."

"What's this?

What's this?"

croaked Dykeman.

"You been getting a place for Bowman, Cummings?"

"Certainly," the lawyer dodged with swift, practical neatness.

"I'd promised him my influence in the matter some little time ago."

"Yes," I said, "mighty little time ago--the day he promised the testimony you wanted in the Gilbert case."

"Anything in what Boyne says, Cummings?"

Dykeman asked anxiously.

"You know I wouldn't stand for that sort of stuff."

The lawyer shook his head, but I didn't believe it was ended between them; Dykeman was the devil to hang on to a point.

This would come up again after I was gone.

Meantime I made haste to shove the photographs before them.

Cummings passed them back with an indifferent, "What's the idea?"

"You don't recognize him?"

"Never saw the man in my life," and again he asked, "What's the idea?"

"You'd recognize a picture of Clayte?"

I countered with a question of my own.

"Yes--I think so," rather dubiously.

"But Dykeman would.

Show them to him."

Dykeman reached for the photographs, spread them out before him, then looked up from them peevishly to say, "For the good Lord's sake!

Don't look any more like Clayte than it does like a horned toad.

Is that what you've been wasting your time over, Boyne?

If you ask me--" "I don't ask you anything," retrieving the pictures, planting them deep in an inner pocket.

Then I got myself out of the room.

Standing on the sidewalk in front of the Fremont House, I felt sort of bewildered.

This last crack had taken all the pep I had left.

I suddenly realized it was long after dinner time, and I'd had no dinner, no lunch, nothing to eat since an early breakfast.

Worth had sent me to the girl--and I hadn't gone.

I dragged myself around to Capehart's cottage as nearly whipped as I ever was in my life.

I found Barbara with Laura Bowman, every one else off the place, out at the shows.

Those girls sure were good to me; they fed me and didn't ask questions till I was ready to talk.

Nothing to be said really, except that I'd failed.

I told them of meeting the Vandemans, and gave them Ina Vandeman's opinion as to how Worth's friends should conduct themselves just now.

"So they'll all be out there," I concluded, "Vandeman and his wife leading the grand march, her sisters as maids of honor--except Skeet, staying at home with her mother.

Cummings goes as a Roman soldier;

Doctor Bowman as a Spanish cavalier.

Edwards didn't see it as the Vandemans do, but after I'd talked to him awhile, he agreed to be there."

And suddenly I noticed for the first time how the relative position of these two women had shifted.

Laura Bowman wasn't red-headed for nothing;

out from under the blight of Bowman and that hateful marriage, she had already thrown off some of her physical frailness; the nervous tension showed itself now in energy.

She was moving swiftly about putting to rights after my meal while she listened.

But Barbara sat looking straight ahead of her; I knew she was seeing streets full of carnival, every friend and acquaintance out at a ball--and Worth in a murderer's cell.

It wouldn't do.

I jumped to my feet with a brisk, "Girl, where's your hat?

We'll go to the study and look over all our points once more.

Get busy--get busy.

That's the medicine for you."

She gave me a miserable look and a negative shake of the head; but I still urged, "Worth sent me to you.

The last thing he said was, 'Take it to Bobs.'

" Dumbly she submitted.

Mrs. Bowman came running with the girl's hat, and, "What about me, Mr. Boyne?

Isn't there something I can do?"

"I wish you'd go to the country club--to the ball--the same as all the others.

Got a costume here, haven't you?"

"Yes, I can wear Barbara's," she glanced to where a pile of soft black stuff, a red scarf, a scarlet poppy wreath, lay on a chair, "She was to have gone as 'The Lady of Dreams.'

" Barbara went with me out into the flare of carnival illumination that paled the afterglow of a gorgeous sunset.

No cars allowed on these down-town streets; even walking, we found it best to take the long way round.

To our left the town roared and racketed as though it was afire.

Nothing said between us till I grumbled out, "I wish I knew where Cummings was keeping Eddie Hughes."

Barbara's voice beside me answered unexpectedly, "Here.

In Santa Ysobel.

Eddie was at Capehart's fifteen minutes before you got there; he came for Bill.

A gasoline engine at the city hall had broken down."

I pulled up short for a moment, and looked back at the town.

"Where'd he go?"

"With Bill, to the city hall.

Eddie's one of the queen's guards.

They're all to be at the country club at ten o'clock to review the grand march that opens the ball."

I mustn't let her dwell on that.

I hurried on once more, and neither of us spoke again till I unlocked the study door, snapped on the lights, brought out and put on the table the 1920 diary and the little blue blotter--the last bits of evidence that I felt hadn't been thoroughly analysed.

Barbara just dropped into a chair and looked from them to me helplessly.

"You've read this all--carefully?"

she sighed.

It shook me.

To have Barbara, the girl I'd seen get meanings and facts from a written page with a mere flirt of a glance, ask me that.

What I really wanted from her was an inspection of the book and blotter, and a deduction from it.

As though she guessed, she answered with a sort of wail, "I can't, I can't even remember what I did see when I looked at these before.

I--can't--remember!"

I went and knelt on the hearth with a pretext of laying a fire there, since the shut-up room was chill.

And when I glanced stealthily over my shoulder, she had gone to work; not as I had ever seen her before, but fumbling at the leaves, hesitating, turning to finger the blotter;

setting her lips desperately, like an over-driven school-child, but keeping right on.

I spun out my fire building to leave her to herself.

Little noises of her moving there at the table; rustle and flutter of the leaves; now and again, a long, sobbing breath.

At last something like a groan caused me to turn my head and see her, with face pale as death, eyes staring across into mine.

"It was Clayte--Edward Clayte--who killed Mr. Gilbert here--in this room."

The hair on the back of my neck stirred; I thought the girl had gone mad.

As I ran over to the table and looked at what was under her hand, it came again.

"He did.

He did.

It was Clayte--the wonder man!"

"Do--do you deduce that, Barbara?"

"Did I?"

she raised to mine the face of a sick child.

"I must have.

See--it's here on the blotter: 'y-t-e,' that's Clayte.

Double l-e-r;

that's 'teller,' 'Avenue' is part of 'Van Ness Avenue Bank.'

Oh, yes; I deduced it, I suppose.

Both crimes end in a locked room and a perfect alibi.

But--but--don't you see, if it is true--and it is--it is--we're worse off than we were before.

We've the wonder man against us."

"Barbara," I cried.

"Barbara, come out of it!"

"See?

You don't believe in me any more," and her head went down on the table.

I let her cry, while I sat and thought.

The broken sentences she'd sobbed out to me began to fit up like a puzzle-game.

By all theories of good detective work, I should have seen from the first the similarity of these crimes.

But Clayte, slipping in here to do this murder--and why?

What mixed him up with affairs here?

And then the icy pang--Dykeman had seen a connection--Cummings had found one.

With them, it was Clayte and his gang--and his gang was Worth Gilbert.

I went and touched Barbara on the shoulder.

"I'm going to take you home now."

"Yes," tears running down her face as she stumbled to her feet.

"I'm a failure.

I can't do anything for Worth."

I wiped her cheeks with my own handkerchief and led her out.

As I turned from locking the door, it seemed to me I saw something move in the shrubbery.

I asked Barbara Wallace about it.

She hadn't noticed anything.

Barbara Wallace hadn't noticed anything!

I began to be scared for her.

Solemn in the sky above boomed out the town clock--two strokes.

Half past nine.

I must get this poor child home.

We were getting in toward the noise and the light when I felt her shiver, and stopped to say, "Did I forget your coat?