And Howard had had a cold, and could not detect its peculiar and unmistakable odor; and Mary Martin had opened the windows, so that no one else might notice it.
Opened the windows and broken the glass.
They kept their secret well, did the authorities.
After all, murder had not been proved; men with hopelessly broken health had killed themselves before this.
And our own local authorities were not minded to let go of Jim, anyhow.
They had Jim, and now they had the motive.
Mr. Waite saw the District Attorney that afternoon, Tuesday, the seventeenth.
I think myself that he was frightened. And small wonder.
Of the three who had met in that room at the Imperial Hotel only he himself was left.
He must have been worried; he must have wondered how long he had left for those little vacations to cure his arthritis, for the pleasant routine of his office, for his golf and bridge, for the little dinners with good wines and his friends about him.
So it is not extraordinary that he went to the District Attorney that morning after he left us, and asked for police protection.
Or that in doing so he virtually signed Jim Blake’s death warrant.
The District Attorney listening absorbedly and Mr. Waite telling that story.
“And what do you make out of it, Waite?
There was still a valid copy of the will among Somers’ papers.”
“Wills have been destroyed before this.”
“You think the Gittings woman got the copy to show Blake, and then he killed her?”
“He may have, hoping to get hold of the original later.”
“And later on the Gunther girl got troublesome and had to be put out of the way?”
“Something like that, perhaps.
I don’t know.
It’s damned sordid.
Only I don’t want to be the next to go!”
“You’re all right.
As for its being sordid, almost all motives for crimes are sordid; cupidity, sex, jealousy.
Sordid, all of them, but actuating motives just the same.
Well, you don’t need a policeman; we’ll get this bird now, thank God.
The press has been yelling for weeks, and I’ve had a few letters myself.”
That was on Tuesday afternoon, May the seventeenth.
That night the District Attorney sent for Jim to question him for the second time, and in Jim’s absence they searched his house; issuing a search warrant on a trumped-up charge against Amos for bootlegging.
For the sake of form two Federal officers ostensibly conducted the search, but Inspector Harrison actually did so.
Amos opened the door, and protested violently that he knew nothing of any liquor. But they pushed past him and went upstairs, taking him along.
In Jim’s room they found the golf suit and the shoes which Amos admitted Jim had worn the night of Sarah’s death, and later they smuggled them out.
Also they discovered that Jim had recently burned some letters, and Inspector Harrison spent some time on his knees examining the fireplace.
But they still had that pretense of bootlegged liquor to carry out, and they had not found the sword-stick.
So they went over the house.
Amos was calmer by that time.
It was only when they got to the door of the cellar that he showed excitement.
“Nothing down there but the furnace, sir,” he said to the Inspector.
That made them suspicious, so they went down and turned on the lights.
At first glance it was unsatisfactory; a cement floor, a white-washed brick wall. They went over that wall carefully for loose bricks, but there were none.
They were quite sure by that time that Amos was uneasy.
Indeed, one of the Federal officers drew a notebook from his pocket and pretended to write down a memorandum.
When he had finished he passed the note to the Inspector.
“I guess that’s correct, Inspector?”
“I believe so,” said the Inspector. But what he had read was this:
“Watch the darky.
He’s scared.”
They started to search again.
Chapter Seventeen