Continental Op Stories · Arson Plus (2/3)

He turned his eyes upward in that vacant stare which people use to aid their memory.

“Yes, I remember now! He was going to town, and I told him that if he took the county road instead of the State Road he’d see the fire on his way in.”

“What kind of looking man was he?”

“Middle-aged⁠—a big man, but sort of slouchy. I think he had on a brown suit, baggy and wrinkled.”

“Medium complexion?”

“Yes.”

“Smile when he talked?”

“Yes, a pleasant sort of fellow.”

“Curly brown hair?”

“Have a heart!” Luce laughed. “I didn’t put him under a magnifying glass.”

From Tavender, we drove over to Wayton. Luce’s description had fit Handerson all right; but while we were at it, we thought we might as well check up to make sure that he had been coming from Wayton.

We spent exactly twenty-five minutes in Wayton; ten of them finding Hammersmith, the grocer with whom Handerson had said he dined and played pool; five minutes finding the proprietor of the poolroom; and ten verifying Handerson’s story.

“What do you think of it now, Mac?” I asked, as we rolled back toward Sacramento.

Mac’s too lazy to express an opinion, or even form one, unless he’s driven to it; but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth listening to, if you can get them.

“There ain’t a hell of a lot to think,” he said cheerfully. “Handerson is out of it, if he ever was in it. There’s nothing to show that anybody but the Coonses and Thornburgh were there when the fire started⁠—but there may have been a regiment there. Them Coonses ain’t too honest looking, maybe, but they ain’t killers, or I miss my guess. But the fact remains that they’re the only bet we got so far. Maybe we ought to try to get a line on them.”

“All right,” I agreed. “I’ll get a wire off to our Seattle office asking them to interview Mrs. Comerford, and see what she can tell about them as soon as we get back in town. Then I’m going to catch a train for San Francisco, and see Thornburgh’s niece in the morning.”

Next morning, at the address McClump had given me⁠—a rather elaborate apartment building on California Street⁠—I had to wait three-quarters of an hour for Mrs. Evelyn Trowbridge to dress. If I had been younger, or a social caller, I suppose I’d have felt amply rewarded when she finally came in⁠—a tall, slender woman of less than thirty; in some sort of clinging black affair; with a lot of black hair over a very white face, strikingly set off by a small red mouth and big hazel eyes that looked black until you got close to them.

But I was a busy, middle-aged detective, who was fuming over having his time wasted; and I was a lot more interested in finding the bird who struck the match than I was in feminine beauty. However, I smothered my grouch, apologized for disturbing her at such an early hour, and got down to business.

“I want you to tell me all you know about your uncle⁠—his family, friends, enemies, business connections, everything.”

I had scribbled on the back of the card I had sent into her what my business was.

“He hadn’t any family,” she said; “unless I might be it. He was my mother’s brother, and I am the only one of that family now living.”

“Where was he born?”

“Here in San Francisco. I don’t know the date, but he was about fifty years old, I think⁠—three years older than my mother.”

“What was his business?”

“He went to sea when he was a boy, and, so far as I know, always followed it until a few months ago.”

“Captain?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I wouldn’t see or hear from him for several years, and he never talked about what he was doing; though he would mention some of the places he had visited⁠—Rio de Janeiro, Madagascar, Tobago, Christiania. Then, about three months ago⁠—some time in May⁠—he came here and told me that he was through with wandering; that he was going to take a house in some quiet place where he could work undisturbed on an invention in which he was interested.

“He lived at the Francisco Hotel while he was in San Francisco. After a couple of weeks, he suddenly disappeared. And then, about a month ago, I received a telegram from him, asking me to come to see him at his house near Sacramento. I went up the very next day, and I thought that he was acting very queerly⁠—he seemed very excited over something. He gave me a will that he had just drawn up and some life insurance policies in which I was beneficiary.

“Immediately after that he insisted that I return home, and hinted rather plainly that he did not wish me to either visit him again or write until I heard from him. I thought all that rather peculiar, as he had always seemed fond of me. I never saw him again.”

“What was this invention he was working on?”

“I really don’t know. I asked him once, but he became so excited⁠—even suspicious⁠—that I changed the subject, and never mentioned it again.”

“Are you sure that he really did follow the sea all those years?”

“No, I am not. I just took it for granted; but he may have been doing something altogether different.”

“Was he ever married?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Know any of his friends or enemies?”

“No, none.”

“Remember anybody’s name that he ever mentioned?”

“No.”

“I don’t want you to think this next question insulting, though I admit it is. But it has to be asked. Where were you the night of the fire?”

“At home; I had some friends here to dinner, and they stayed until about midnight. Mr. and Mrs. Walker Kellogg, Mrs. John Dupree, and a Mr. Killmer, who is a lawyer. I can give you their addresses, or you can get them from the phone book, if you want to question them.”

From Mrs. Trowbridge’s apartment I went to the Francisco Hotel. Thornburgh had been registered there from May tenth to June thirteenth, and hadn’t attracted much attention. He had been a tall, broad-shouldered, erect man of about fifty, with rather long brown hair brushed straight back; a short, pointed brown beard, and healthy, ruddy complexion⁠—grave, quiet, punctilious in dress and manner; his hours had been regular and he had had no visitors that any of the hotel employees remembered.

At the Seamen’s Bank⁠—upon which Thornburgh’s check, in payment of the house, had been drawn⁠—I was told that he had opened an account there on May fifteenth, having been introduced by W. W. Jeffers & Sons, local stock brokers. A balance of a little more than four hundred dollars remained to his credit. The cancelled checks on hand were all to the order of various life insurance companies; and for amounts that, if they represented premiums, testified to rather large policies. I jotted down the names of the life insurance companies, and then went to the offices of W. W. Jeffers & Sons.

Thornburgh had come in, I was told, on the tenth of May with $4,000 worth of Liberty bonds that he wanted sold. During one of his conversations with Jeffers, he had asked the broker to recommend a bank, and Jeffers had given him a letter of introduction to the Seamen’s Bank.

That was all Jeffers knew about him. He gave me the numbers of the bonds, but tracing Liberty bonds isn’t the easiest thing in the world.

The reply to my Seattle telegram was waiting for me at the agency when I arrived.

Mrs. Edward Comerford rented apartment at address you give on May Twenty-five Gave it up June Six Trunks to San Francisco same day Check numbers GN four five two five eight seven and eight and nine

Tracing baggage is no trick at all, if you have the dates and check numbers to start with⁠—as many a bird who is wearing somewhat similar numbers on his chest and back, because he overlooked that detail when making his getaway, can tell you⁠—and twenty-five minutes in a baggage-room at the Ferry and half an hour in the office of a transfer company gave me my answer.

The trunks had been delivered to Mrs. Evelyn Trowbridge’s apartment!

I got Jim Tarr on the phone and told him about it.

“Good shooting!” he said, forgetting for once to indulge his wit. “We’ll grab the Coonses here and Mrs. Trowbridge there, and that’s the end of another mystery.”

“Wait a minute!” I cautioned him. “It’s not all straightened out yet! There’s still a few kinks in the plot.”

“It’s straight enough for me. I’m satisfied.”

“You’re the boss, but I think you’re being a little hasty. I’m going up and talk with the niece again. Give me a little time before you phone the police here to make the pinch. I’ll hold her until they get there.”

Evelyn Trowbridge let me in this time, instead of the maid who had opened the door for me in the morning, and she led me to the same room in which we had had our first talk. I let her pick out a seat, and then I selected one that was closer to either door than hers was.

On the way up I had planned a lot of innocent-sounding questions that would get her all snarled up; but after taking a good look at this woman sitting in front of me, leaning comfortably back in her chair, coolly waiting for me to speak my piece, I discarded the trick stuff and came out cold-turkey.

“Ever use the name Mrs. Edward Comerford?”

“Oh, yes.” As casual as a nod on the street.

“When?”

“Often. You see, I happen to have been married not so long ago to Mr. Edward Comerford. So it’s not really strange that I should have used the name.”

“Use it in Seattle recently?”

“I would suggest,” she said sweetly, “that if you are leading up to the references I gave Coons and his wife, you might save time by coming right to it?”

“That’s fair enough,” I said. “Let’s do that.”

There wasn’t a halftone, a shading, in voice, manner, or expression to indicate that she was talking about anything half so serious or important to her as a possibility of being charged with murder. She might have been talking about the weather, or a book that hadn’t interested her particularly.

“During the time that Mr. Comerford and I were married, we lived in Seattle, where he still lives. After the divorce, I left Seattle and resumed my maiden name. And the Coonses were in our employ, as you might learn if you care to look it up. You’ll find my husband⁠—or former husband⁠—at the Chelsea apartments, I think.

“Last summer, or late spring, I decided to return to Seattle. The truth of it is⁠—I suppose all my personal affairs will be aired anyhow⁠—that I thought perhaps Edward and I might patch up our differences; so I went back and took an apartment on Woodmansee Terrace. As I was known in Seattle as Mrs. Edward Comerford, and as I thought my using his name might influence him a little, perhaps, I used it while I was there.

“Also I telephoned the Coonses to make tentative arrangements in case Edward and I should open our house again; but Coons told me that they were going to California, and so I gladly gave them an excellent recommendation when, some days later, I received a letter of inquiry from an employment bureau in Sacramento. After I had been in Seattle for about two weeks, I changed my mind about the reconciliation⁠—Edward’s interest, I learned, was all centered elsewhere; so I returned to San Francisco.”

“Very nice! But⁠—”

“If you will permit me to finish,” she interrupted. “When I went to see my uncle in response to his telegram, I was surprised to find the Coonses in his house. Knowing my uncle’s peculiarities, and finding them now increased, and remembering his extreme secretiveness about his mysterious invention, I cautioned the Coonses not to tell him that they had been in my employ.

“He certainly would have discharged them, and just as certainly would have quarreled with me⁠—he would have thought that I was having him spied upon. Then, when Coons telephoned me after the fire, I knew that to admit that the Coonses had been formerly in my employ, would, in view of the fact that I was my uncle’s heir, cast suspicion on all three of us. So we foolishly agreed to say nothing about it and carry on the deception.”

That didn’t sound all wrong, but it didn’t sound all right. I wished Tarr had taken it easier and let us get a better line on these people, before having them thrown in the coop.

“The coincidence of the Coonses stumbling into my uncle’s house is, I fancy, too much for your detecting instincts,” she went on, as I didn’t say anything. “Am I to consider myself under arrest?”

I’m beginning to like this girl; she’s a nice, cool piece of work.

“Not yet,” I told her. “But I’m afraid it’s going to happen pretty soon.”

She smiled a little mocking smile at that, and another when the doorbell rang.

It was O’Hara from police headquarters. We turned the apartment upside down and inside out, but didn’t find anything of importance except the will she had told me about, dated July eighth, and her uncle’s life insurance policies. They were all dated between May fifteenth and June tenth, and added up to a little more than $200,000.

I spent an hour grilling the maid after O’Hara had taken Evelyn Trowbridge away, but she didn’t know any more than I did. However, between her, the janitor, the manager of the apartments, and the names Mrs. Trowbridge had given me, I learned that she had really been entertaining friends on the night of the fire⁠—until after eleven o’clock, anyway⁠—and that was late enough.

Half an hour later I was riding the Short Line back to Sacramento. I was getting to be one of the line’s best customers, and my anatomy was on bouncing terms with every bump in the road; and the bumps, as “Rubberhead” Davis used to say about the flies and mosquitoes in Alberta in summer, “is freely plentiful.”

Between bumps I tried to fit the pieces of this Thornburgh puzzle together. The niece and the Coonses fit in somewhere, but not just where we had them. We had been working on the job sort of lopsided, but it was the best we could do with it. In the beginning we had turned to the Coonses and Evelyn Trowbridge because there was no other direction to go; and now we had something on them⁠—but a good lawyer could make hash of our case against them.

The Coonses were in the county jail when I got to Sacramento. After some questioning they had admitted their connection with the niece, and had come through with stories that matched hers in every detail.

Tarr, McClump, and I sat around the sheriff’s desk and argued.

“Those yarns are pipe-dreams,” the sheriff said. “We got all three of ’em cold, and there’s nothing else to it. They’re as good as convicted of murder!”

McClump grinned derisively at his superior, and then turned to me.

“Go on! You tell him about the holes in his little case. He ain’t your boss, and can’t take it out on you later for being smarter than he is!”

Tarr glared from one of us to the other.

“Spill it, you wise guys!” he ordered.

“Our dope is,” I told him, figuring that McClump’s view of it was the same as mine, “that there’s nothing to show that even Thornburgh knew he was going to buy that house before the tenth of June, and that the Coonses were in town looking for work on the second. And besides, it was only by luck that they got the jobs. The employment office sent two couples out there ahead of them.”

“We’ll take a chance on letting the jury figure that out.”

“Yes? You’ll also take a chance on them figuring out that Thornburgh, who seems to have been a nut all right, might have touched off the place himself! We’ve got something on these people, Jim, but not enough to go into court with them! How are you going to prove that when the Coonses were planted in Thornburgh’s house⁠—if you can even prove they were⁠—they and the Trowbridge woman knew he was going to load up with insurance policies?”

The sheriff spat disgustedly.

“You guys are the limit! You run around in circles, digging up the dope on these people until you get enough to hang ’em, and then you run around hunting for outs! What the hell’s the matter with you now?”

I answered him from halfway to the door⁠—the pieces were beginning to fit together under my skull.

“Going to run some more circles! Come on, Mac!”