Kept Women Can’t Quit

I said, “It was well planned and Downer was in on the play from the start. Downer knew that a certain private detective was going to be on his trail because his wife, or Hazel Clune, if you prefer that name, had consulted that detective. Downer knew that Hazel knew about the hiding place in the trunk. Therefore, it wasn’t safe any more. So Downer decided to keep the money in a money belt on his person.

“Downer came to San Francisco. He wanted everyone to think he’d lost the fifty grand. Therefore, he switched things deliberately so he’d get my trunk. The scheme worked. That was a trick taken by Downer. It fooled you and it fooled everybody except one person.”

“Who?” Sellers asked, frowning thoughtfully.

“The murderer. Now, if you want to get off the spot you only need to prove Baxley actually did have a partner. That lets you out.”

Sellers started rubbing the angle of his jaw with the fingers of his left hand.

Inspector Hobart said to Sellers, “The guy’s right, Frank. You get off the spot when you can prove Baxley had a partner. I get off the spot when I’ve found the murderer.”

“You’ve got him,” Sellers said.

“Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t,” Hobart said.

Sellers said, “You can hold him on suspicion.”

Hobart shook his head. “As a material witness is all.”

“I’m for calling in the press,” Sellers said. “I’d book him on suspicion of murder.”

Hobart thought it over for a moment, then said, “I don’t like it, but if it’ll help you personally, we can stand the gaff.”

I said to Inspector Hobart, “There should have been some clues there in the room where Downer was murdered.”

Sellers grinned. “Listen to him now. He’s telling you how to investigate a homicide.”

The Inspector motioned Sellers with his hand to keep quiet. “What sort of clues, Lam?” he asked.

I said, “The guy was stabbed in the back.”

“That’s right.”

“Fell forward on his face.”

“Right.”

I said, “If somebody was putting a lot of pressure on Downer, he’d hardly have turned his back on them.”

“Maybe he didn’t know the other person was in the room,” Sellers said.

“Maybe,” I agreed.

Inspector Hobart was interested. “Keep talking,” he said. “What do you think happened?”

I said, “Downer had just finished opening the trunk when he was killed.”

“Why was he opening the trunk when he knew it wasn’t his trunk?” Inspector Hobart asked.

“That,” I said, “is what I’m telling you. How do you know he didn’t switch trunks? Why did he get killed as soon as it became apparent someone had switched trunks?”

“You got the answer to that question?” Hobart asked.

“I may have,” I said.

“You’re in San Francisco now,” he said. “The extent to which you come out of this, if you do come out of it without losing a lot of hide, will be measured by the extent to which you co-operate with the San Francisco police.”

“That,” I said, “depends on what you mean by co-operation.”

“When we co-operate up here we do a reasonably good job,” Hobart said.

“Watch him,” Sellers warned. “He’s a smart little bastard and he’ll out-trade you if you give him a chance.”

I said, “Let’s concede that Standley Downer had a trunk made. He had a secret compartment in it. He wanted to use that secret compartment for storing fifty nice new one-thousand-dollar bills. Now then, where did he intend to get those bills?”

“Go on, wise guy,” Sellers said. “You’re telling the story. We’ve got lots of time. Tell us, where did he expect to get the fifty one-thousand-dollar bills?”

“He expected to highjack them,” I said.

“From whom?”

“From Baxley’s partner.”

“Baxley’s partner!” Sellers exclaimed. “What are you talking about? Standley Downer was Baxley’s partner.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Everything points to it. The fact that Baxley got in a panic and called Hazel Downer and... when he knew we were following him...”

Sergeant Sellers’ voice, which had started out full of confidence, began to lose some of its assurance and finally trailed away into silence.

“Exactly,” I said. “You’ve made the one mistake an investigator should never make. You’ve started out with an assumption and then you’ve tried to twist the evidence to support that assumption.”

“All right,” Sellers said. “What do you think?”

“I think,” I said, “that Baxley was smarter than you thought he was.”

“Go ahead.”

“Baxley and his partner both knew that Downer was a dangerous man, that he was on to what they were doing. When Baxley found out you were following him he deliberately led you to Hazel Downer. She was the red herring he wanted to draw across your trail so you wouldn’t get wise to his real partner.”

“All right, Pint Size” Sellers said, trying to appear jaunty, “I am tuning in on your broadcast so you may as well go ahead with the commercial. Who was the partner?”

“I don’t know.”

Sellers’ face began to get red. “You mean you’ve taken me all around the rosebush in order to tell me that you don’t know where you’re going?”

I shook my head. “I know who I think he is.”

“Who?”