“Where shall I begin?” Kurth asked quietly. “Where do you usually begin? Begin at the beginnin’ for a change. It’s about time for some one to begin there instead of the end. If I’d wanted you to begin at the end, I’d of said so. Where’d you meet up with Sanborn first?”
“I met him about four or five years ago in New York. I was working for the Rayman Publishing House at the time. He had some ideas about a new novel that he wanted us to handle. I brought him home for dinner. That was where Maida met him first. We both liked him. He was amusing, witty, interesting and a good talker. We developed a friendship with him. Maida had a friend, Alice Harding, and the four of us ran around together a lot.”
“Alice Harding?” Dot interrupted. “I used to know her. Didn’t she kill herself or something?”
“Yes.” Kurth’s tone was bitter. “I’ll tell you all about that later. We were all very intimate. You know how it is when four people are together a great deal. Well, the long and short of it is—do you remember the book Sanborn wrote that was called the greatest expose of married life in America?”
It was the book I had tried to read and given up, as I had told Bill. “About the girl who loved a man who was married to a woman who loved a man who cared for the first girl?” I asked.
“Yes. That’s the one. If you think it out you can see how it applied to the four of us, Alice, myself, Maida and Sanborn.”
I gasped. “Do you mean—?”
“Exactly. That was the way Sanborn repaid our friendship. We read the book when it came out, expecting it to be the one he had told us about, the life of an opera singer. But we found the story of the four of us. It was the reason for our divorce.”
“But I never dreamed of such a thing,” Betsey said. “You didn’t know we were the characters? Probably you wouldn’t. Sanborn stuck very much to the truth, but the whole thing was colored and touched up and distorted so that the whole affair was ugly and sordid. Alice read it and came over to see us about it. We called Sanborn in and asked him to explain.”
“Did he?” Asey asked.
“He laughed at us as though we were so many puppets on a string. He admitted that he had taken us for his characters. He thought he had been exceedingly clever.”
“Did every one know it was you?”
“No one knew for sure. There were a good many whispers, though. You know how it is in New York. You have different groups of friends but most of them don’t know that the others exist. And the book wasn’t exactly the type that friends would care to connect you with, to your face, at least. But we knew. The hellish part of it was that I didn’t know how much of it was true, about Maida and Sanborn, of course. Nor could she tell about Alice and myself. As a debunking of married life it certainly dug deeper into the muck than any other forty books you could name. But can’t you see how it was? We didn’t know how much was true and how much was Sanborn’s imagination. We couldn’t tell how much of us people recognized. There is always a certain amount of petty deception between two people, but we couldn’t tell from what he’d written how much each of us had been deceiving the other. Things went from bad to worse. I let Maida divorce me, though we did the thing as quietly as we could and neither Sanborn nor Alice was mentioned. We couldn’t bring him in without dragging her through the mire, and we didn’t want to do that. We were in an uncomfortable position. If we sued him or made any fuss about the book we would be overwhelmed by the publicity, and at the time it simply would have meant that I’d have lost my job and all the chances of getting another one.”
“So you went an’ divorced yourselves without gettin’ at the root of things?” Asey asked disgustedly.
“You can’t imagine how terrible it was, Asey,” Maida told him. “You see, it was true that I’d been indiscreet with Sanborn, though not nearly to such an extent as he portrayed it in the book. It was really a very mild flirtation. I couldn’t make Johnny see it and of course I had been a little jealous of Alice. None of the three of us really trusted the other at all. It just got more and more involved all the time.”
“What about the other girl?”
“We thought, and so did she, that Sanborn really cared for her,” Kurth answered. “I think she played about with me more to pique him than anything else. But after the book episode, he left her absolutely alone. Didn’t go near her or write her or anything. One night as she was waiting outside a theater for a cab with another man, he casually asked her if she’d seen Sanborn lately. She was abnormally sensitive about the affair. We all had been upset over it, but she had taken it even harder than we, I think. She made some answer, turned away from him, then slid and fell in front of a taxi that was drawing up to the curb. The police called it an accident but we knew better. The man she was with was certain it was done on purpose, too. The girl she lived with told Maida that the night before she’d come home unexpectedly early and found Alice all but unconscious. She’d shut herself in the kitchenette and turned on the gas.”
Schonbrun nodded his head vigorously. “That makes two girls, his mother an’ two others I know of that’s got Dave to thank for gettin’ themselves killed, one way an’ another. An’ a divorce. They was probably more, too. I told you so.”
“What’s that got to do with this here libel suit?”
“Coming back from China,” Kurth answered, “I met a chap on the boat who told me about Sanborn and his habit of debunking people. Debunking humanity is his term He was a doctor who had known Sanborn and if you remember, there was a book not so long ago about doctors and the medical profession. Only Sanborn had made his character too much like the original and this fellow had been forced to leave his practice. He told me his own story and then described what Sanborn had done to it. Suddenly I realized what an ass I’d been. When I got back I dashed to a lawyer and started that libel suit in both our names. I don’t know why I did, except that I was more furious than I’d been before about the whole matter. I didn’t know where Maida was or anything about her, but I went right ahead.”
“N’en what?” Asey asked.
“Then my lawyer made me see light. Such a suit was bound to cause a lot of talk, bring the matter up again and drag out all sorts of unpleasant details. In all probability it wouldn’t do any good and a lot of harm. So he dropped it. I saw Sanborn once. He tried to duck me, and it made me so mad I knocked him down. After that he kept out of my way. Then last week I was in Boston and read of his being down here. I thought I might be able to collar him and drag the truth out of him, that is, find out how much of that story had been his imagination. I sent you that telegram. Then when I had no reply I came down on my own hook.”
“What’d you use another name for?”
“Because I didn’t think any one would recognize me and I scarcely wanted any one to know how anxious I was to get at Sanborn. After all, it was a ten-to-one chance that I’d never see the Whitsbys. I didn’t know that he’d moved up next door to them. I had every intention of getting a written statement from him and then beating him within an inch of his life. Then I was going to find Maida and get things settled again. You can imagine how I felt when I saw him lying there.”
“What about you?” Asey turned to Maida. “How do you come into this at this point?”
“I’d always felt that John and I had acted like two idiots to have gone and separated like that without finding out about things. But at the time I was as wrathful as he was. Last week I landed in Boston and saw Sanborn’s name in the paper as staying down here; and I thought I would come down and see him and try to find out about things. I don’t know why I was reading the Cape news so assiduously except that we had a lot of friends down here and I had been out of touch with them so long. I telegraphed Miss Prudence thinking that the hot weather would be a good excuse to ask to come down. Then I met a man I knew in Boston who said he’d seen Johnny and that he was coming down to see some one here. It was Carl Thorndike, John, and he said that you must have some deep-seated reason for coming because you’d refused to go to Maine with him. I put two and two together and decided that you were after Sanborn too, and I had some notion of stopping you before you did anything rash.”
‘That’s all?”
“Absolutely all, Asey. I came here Friday night. I went into the cabin,—I found out where it was from a man at a gasoline station,—intending to wait till he got home. I thought of course when I saw no light that he was out somewhere. You know the rest. Except that I should be only too glad to get the person who killed him off, even though I’d like to help Bill.”
“Speaking of doctors and things,” Kurth remarked, “I wonder about that doctor who’s popping about here. That physician I met on the boat said that there’d been another involved in that. He didn’t mention his name, and it’s a very remote chance, of course, but do you suppose this Reynolds has anything to do with this? He seems almost too anxious to get the murderer. Is there any reason for him to involve himself in this?”
“He’s the medical examiner,” I said, “and I suppose he thinks it’s a part of his duty since Sullivan is so dead set on convicting Bill. What do you think, Asey?”
He shook his head. “Beyond me. He sure knew a lot about what killed Sanborn. And I saw his car cornin’ up the beach road Friday afternoon myself. I don’t know. Miss Frue, I’m still sure what I told you is right, and this suggestion of Mr. Kurth’s here might be an explanation of it. Abe, are you dead sure you saw that flash of white before you went to the cottage ?”
“I’m pretty sure, boss.”
“If that’s true, it ought to of been a woman. I don’t think it was Dot, though all we got to go on is that fact about the time, an’ that’s kind of slim. Dot, it ’pears to me that the sword hangin’ over your head is danglin’ from an awful thin thread.”
“I know it is,” said Dot resignedly. “But on my word, I didn’t kill Sanborn. He was alive when I left that cabin. That’s the truth, though I can’t prove a single word of it.”
“The doctor wears white knickers most of the time,” Betsey suggested. “That could have been the flash of white, couldn’t it?”
“It could of. Abe, you take the floor. You picked up that tin of sardines, didn’t you?”
“Yes. An’ how you know beats me.”
“You shouldn’t of left the key lyin’ around in your pocket, even if lyin’ is a habit of yours. I picked it off you when you was bangin’ my head in. Why didn’t you want to tell us about them sardines?”
“Well,” Schonbrun began, but Asey interrupted him. “Don’t go beginnin’ by sayin’ well an’ hedgin’ an’ thinkin’ up more things. Tell us right out.”
“Those folks will tell you why.” He motioned to Kurth and Maida.
Asey looked questioningly at Kurth.
“Sanborn was a perfectly normal person in most ways,” Kurth explained, “but he had a horror of sardines that was definitely abnormal. There are plenty of people who don’t like certain things to eat. Almost every one has something that they’d just as soon pass by. But Sanborn went absolutely off his head when he saw a sardine or even heard them mentioned. It resembled an epileptic fit more than anything else. He simply wasn’t right in his head or something. One night at the apartment I opened a tin of sardines. Alice started to caution me, but before I’d caught on Sanborn had seen them. He all but frothed at the mouth with rage and left the house. We never mentioned sardines after.”
“I wonder why he did,” I said.
“I don’t know. But I’ve heard of stories of shellshocked men who became unconscious when a car back-fired and all that. I suppose it’s a complex or a phobia of some sort.”
“I still don’t see why you wouldn’t tell us about that tin,” I said to Schonbrun. “And do you know why he acted that way about them?”
“I didn’t tell you, an’ I wasn’t goin’ to. I’ll have to go back to the beginnin’ again. You know I told you he worked in a factory afternoons when he was in school?”
“Yup.” I noticed that Asey had pocketed his jackknife.
“It was a sardine factory. We didn’t have much money an’ Dave used to bring home sardines when we didn’t have anything else to eat. He hated sardines, always, because he got sick from eatin’ too many of ’em when he was a kid. I guess workin’ over ’em all day didn’t help him to like ’em any better. Once when ma wasn’t workin’ an’ they’d laid off hands at the factory we lived on ’em for a whole week. I got tired from eatin’ them myself. But Dave, he used to get just like these people said, whenever he saw them. An’ there wasn’t nothing else for him to eat, that time. Soon after he went back to the factory again he got fired and got another job. It wasn’t much later he beat it for good.”
“But why—” Asey persisted.
“I’m cornin’ to that. Friday I found the tin at the foot of the hill. I was kind of hungry so I put it in my pocket an’ when I got to the cabin an’ Dave wasn’t there I sat down an’ ate ’em. I bu’sted the end an’ couldn’t use a key so I found a can opener an’ used that. If that cop had been any good he’d have noticed that an’ looked at the opener. Only I pulled a fast one, see? I wiped it off, handle an’ all, when I got through with it. I’d just thought about Dave an’ the sardines then, that’s why I did it. An’ just as I was finishin’ I heard him cornin’, so I tossed the tin way under the table so’s he wouldn’t notice it, see? That’s all there was to that. But you know I said that there was others that would kill that guy in a minute? Well, one day Dave made a mistake at the factory, just after he went back that time I told you about when he was laid off, an’ he put something in some oil or something that he shouldn’t an’ some people got poisoned. The boss found out who done it an’ that was why he got fired, see? An’ one of the men who worked at the factory with him had swiped some of the bad tins an’ his two kids took sick after eatin’ them. One died. He swore he’d get Dave an’ he nearly did. A week before Dave left home he got hold of him an’ beat him up plenty. That’s why when I went back the second time an’ found him dead I thought I wouldn’t say anything about the tin if I got pulled into this, which I thought I wouldn’t. I didn’t know as the Porter guy was mixed up in it, an’ I thought the tin would confuse people. An’ it would lead people off the track if detectives got on the job an’ started things. See?”
“You ain’t so dumb as I thought,” Asey informed him. “I get what you’re aimin’ at. You thought they’d go on the track of the sardines an’ find out about the guy that threatened him or one of ’em out of that there sardine episode?”
“Sure, why not? I knew it wasn’t. An’ how was I to know that even this bum sheriff could track ’em down? I thought when you got me that you suspected me, so I didn’t tell you. I wanted you to get off the track on the things too. That’s mostly why I didn’t tell you. The rest was that they were blamin’ Porter an’ why should I stick my feet into any puddle?”
“Is that all, Abe? It ain’t any too convincin’.”
“Every bit is true. I didn’t want to get myself into this, an’ I told you that whoever done this was a friend of mine. It’s all the same to me if you never find out who done it. That’s all there is, there ain’t no more. An’ that’s straight.”
“Hm.” Asey sighed. “It looks to me like we’d reached a dead end. Ain’t nothin’ like pullin’ in forty fathom of cod line an’ findin’ you got a lot of sea-weed on the end of it. It ain’t no more than I expected, but I did kind of hope for a little more than this.”
“But the doctor,” Betsey suggested. “What about him?”
“For one thing, they’s about twenty million doctors in the United States, if you believe the cigarette ads they endorse. For another, a flash of white might be a pair of knickers or anything else in Christendom. I s’pose we can look into the thing, but I got to admit I’m pretty dubious about it.”
“Speaking of angels,” Emma muttered, “here comes the gentleman in person. The worthy Sullivan is with him and both look very determined. Which of us d’you suppose they’re after?”
“Me, of course,” said Kurth. “The doctor never forgot that grand slam of mine. He pretends to admire it but actually it cost him money.”
“More likely,” I said, “they’re after me. The doctor has been getting very irate because I’ve not told him things he thinks he ought to know.”
I spoke flippantly. That they actually were after me did not enter my mind as being humanly possible. But I was mistaken. To my horror, they ranged themselves before me threateningly.
“Miss Whitsby,” said the sheriff, “I’m arresting you as an accomplice in this murder of Dale Sanborn.”
I had done a lot of gasping in the past two days, but this was the last straw. If Sullivan had hit me on the head with his billy I think I should have been less stunned. But I managed to answer him calmly enough.
“I do hope you’re not intending to put me into a box-car or the bilboes? For a woman of my age and position I consider them scarcely dignified.”
“Are you stark ravin’ crazy?” Asey demanded.
“No, Asey Mayo, I ain’t. I’ve stood your goings-on long enough. You can make a monkey out of some folks, but you can’t make a monkey out of me. An’ if you make any more fuss I’ll arrest you along of her.”
Asey shrugged his shoulders. “Why not arrest the whole caboodle of us an’ be done with it? Slough, you come on an’ ’rest me. I dare you to. Come on. I double dare you.”
Sullivan’s red face grew still redder. “You better keep quiet or I will.”
“See here,” said Kurth sharply, “is this a part of your work, Doctor Reynolds? Because if it is, I shall personally make sure that you rue the day you ever had any such brilliant little thought. Just what mental process was it that brought you to this clever conclusion ?”
“It’s not so absurd as you may think,” the doctor replied tartly. “Tell them, Sullivan.”
“That’s right,” said Asey contemptuously. “Pass the buck. Let George do it.”
“All right,” said Sullivan heavily. “Well, the doc here was sure that there was more to this than I thought at first. So we moseyed around and found out a lot. I got hold of Ramon Barradio an’ he told me something that looks important.”
“That’s the way to get inf’mation,” said Asey admiringly. “How many times he been in jail? Six or eight, Slough? An’ didn’t you never read in the Bible about lookin’ a gift hoss in the mouth? Or the Portygees offerin’ information? Huh?”
Sullivan glared at him. “You’re real funny, ain’t you? Well, Ramon told me about something that happened up to Pete’s dance hall on Wednesday night. Seems like Miss Betsey here an’ Sanborn, they was up there an’ they had a little difficulty.”
“You didn’t tell me—” I began.
But Betsey, white as a sheet, interrupted me.
“I know I didn’t tell you we were there. Let him go on, Snoodles. If he’s got to.”
“Well, Miss Whitsby, your niece an’ Sanborn had a little altercation. Ramon said he didn’t know how it all started, but he happened to hear what went on.”
“Funny how things happen like that,” Asey murmured softly. “Real funny. All the in’cent bystanders ain’t got killed off in Chicago, I cal’late.”
“Will you keep your gab quiet, Asey Mayo? Anyway, Miss Whitsby, Ramon heard your niece say, ‘If Bill Porter or my aunt heard you say any such thing, they’d kill you on the spot.’ And then Sanborn laughed and said why didn’t she tell if she was such a fool as to do it. And then Miss Betsey said she’d like to kill him herself.”
“What was it all about, Betsey?” I pleaded.
“He was annoying me, that was all.” Her voice was toneless. “I did hope we could get through this without unearthing all the combined scandal of the family and our friends.”
“Anyway,” Sullivan continued, “Sanborn says why didn’t she tell them and see what happens? He said he bet that nothing would because other people had offered to kill him but nothing ever came of it. What do you think of that?” He concluded triumphantly.
“Not much,” said Asey. “What’s the good of all that if Betsey didn’t tell Miss Prue or Bill about it? I can’t see it.”
“How do you know she didn’t? Answer me that? How do you know?”
“He doesn’t know,” I retorted. “But he’s perfectly right about it. I didn’t know and I’m sure Bill Porter didn’t. And will you please tell me in the name of all that’s sensible how you can arrest me for being an accomplice of Bill?”
“I got that all figured out. You say you was out in the kitchen all that time. What was to keep you from standin’ around an’ seein’ that no one interfered when Bill come an’ done the murder? Or maybe you even held his attention while Bill killed him. No one can prove that you was where you said you was all that time.”
“Not only that,” the doctor continued, “but hadn’t you sent Betsey up to town to get her out of the way?”
“Sure,” said Asey. With great deliberation he relieved himself of an outworn quid of tobacco and cut himself another. “Sure. An’ she left Mrs. Manton an’ Dot around to see what was goin’ on, an’ they did it in broad daylight, just so’s no one else would know. You two are real deep thinkers, that’s what you are. That two small brains could carry all you know is a growin’ wonder, as the feller said.”
“I don’t care what you say!” Sullivan shook his fist in Asey’s face. “Captain Kinney of the old second precinct—”
“To hell with Captain Kinney of his ole second do-funny!” Asey roared. “An’ keep your dirty hands where they belong. If you had the brains of an ox, Slough Sullivan, you’d know your boy friend the doctor was mixed up in this more than Miss Prue here ever was.”
“Whaaat?” Sullivan looked startled.
“Sure. What do you think he’s so int’rested in gettin’ the murderer all done up in nice steel bracelets for? What else but ’cause he’s got a guilty conscience himself? Don’t you know it’s the folks that give the biggest checks to charity as own the sweat shops? Ain’t it the helpful one that burns the soup? Look at him. If he ain’t guilty I never seen a guilty man.”
Sullivan scratched his head. “By golly, I never thought of that.” He was completely crestfallen.
“Sure,” said Asey nonchalantly. “Look at him. Purple to the gills an’ he can’t speak a word. For why? ’Cause he done it himself. See his hands tremble? Hear him breathe? What more evidence does a man like you want, Slough? Go on an’ arrest him. He’s the one that came after Bill Porter left. He bashed Sanborn on the head himself. How’d he know so much about it an’ about what did the killin’ if he didn’t do it himself?”
“I never did any such thing,” the doctor spluttered. “It’s a lie. An infamous lie.”
“Didn’t, did you?” Sullivan turned to him. “I don’t Know but what Asey’s right. You look guilty as sin. I ought to of known when you come botherin’ around with all your talk about blunt instruments an’ all your clues. Gettin’ me up here to arrest a nice woman like Miss Whitsby an’ makin’ a fool out of myself. Huh. You probably wrote them notes yourself.”
“That’s the boy, Slough. You’re right,” said Asey approvingly. “You go right on an’ arrest him. I would if I was you.”
“I’ll do just that,” said Sullivan delightedly. “I’ll put him in the box-car longside of Bill.”
“Ain’t you goin’ to let Bill go free?”
“Nun-no.” Sullivan shook his head. “I might as well take the both of them. I want to make sure before I let Bill go.”
“Look here,” protested the doctor hotly, “you can’t do a thing like that. What motive would I have for killing a man I’d never even met? This is fantastic. I’ll have you prosecuted.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care about motives either,” said Sullivan cheerily. “If I got two people who might of done it, it’s all the better for me to-morrow mornin’. Bill’s got plenty of motives and you got plenty of suspicion tacked on to you. Come along. I’ll take you right along now.”
“But,” the doctor began.
“But nothin’. Come along. It won’t do you no harm to sit an’ think for a while. You do enough talkin’ as a rule. Now you can get yourself talked about. Say, did any of you see him up this way?”
“I saw him cornin’ yonder along the beach road at four-thirty on Friday,” Asey informed him. “I’ve thought of it plenty before. He parked his car at the bend in the road and got out an’ come in this direction. I was watchin’ through the glasses. But you got enough to go on, Slough. You don’t need no more.”
“Guess I have, at that.”
“When you goin’ to start up to court to-morrer?”
“At eight. That’ll give me time enough.”
“Fair enough.”
They left, with Sullivan’s great ham-like paw firmly gripping the doctor’s shoulder.
“Asey Mayo,” I demanded, “did he really do it?”
“Not a chance in the world,” that gentleman retorted comfortably. “Only he had a hankerin’ to ’rest some one an’ it might as well been the doc as you.”
He warbled a bar from the Floradora sextette.
“An’ why not him?” He paraphrased. “An’ why not him?”