Mason sat in the attorney’s room at the jail and looked across at Bedford.
“I presume,” he said, “you had that hit-and-run thing all figured out so you could save your wife’s good name and were willing to sacrifice yourself in order to keep her from becoming involved.”
Bedford nodded.
“Well, why the devil didn’t you tell me what you were going to do?” Mason asked.
“I was afraid you’d disapprove.”
“How did you get the details?” Mason asked.
“I took care of that all right,” Bedford said. “As it happens, it was a case that I knew something about. This old woman was related to one of my employees. The doctors had decided she needed rather an expensive operation. My employee didn’t approach me on it, but he did tell the whole story to Elsa Griffin. She relayed it to me. I told her to see that the man was able to get an advance which would cover the cost of the operation, and then told her to raise his wages in thirty days so that the raise would just about take care of payments on the advance. Two nights later the old woman started to cross the street, apparently in sort of a daze, and someone hit her and hit her hard. They never did find out who it was.”
“Will your employee get suspicious?” Mason asked.
“I don’t think so. The story was not told to me but to Elsa Griffin. Of course, that’s one angle that I’ve got to take care of. Elsa will handle that for me.”
“Well, you’ve stuck your neck in the noose now,” Mason said.
“It’s not so bad,” Bedford told him. “As I understand it, a felony outlaws within three years, so they can’t prosecute me on the hit-and-run charge because it’s over three years ago. Don’t you see, Mason? I simply had to have something that they could pin on me so there would be an excuse for me to be paying blackmail to Denham. Otherwise, the newspaper reporters would have started trying to find what it was that Denham had on me, and of course they’d have thought about my wife right away, started looking into her past, and then the whole ugly thing would have been out.
“In this way, I’ve covered my tracks in such a way that no one will ever think to investigate Mrs. Bedford.”
“Let’s hope so,” Mason told him.
“Now look, Mason. I think I know who killed Denham.”
“Who?”
“You remember that there was a woman prowling around the motel down there, a woman whose presence can’t be accounted for.
“Now, I’ve got this thing figured out pretty well. Denham was a blackmailer. Someone decided that the only way out was to see that Denham was killed. The only way to kill him so that it wouldn’t arouse suspicion and point directly to the person committing the murder was to wait until Denham was blackmailing someone else and then pull the job. In that way, it would be a perfect setup. It would look as though the other person had done the job.”
“Go on,” Mason said.
“So, as I figure it, this woman was either shadowing Denham or had some way of knowing when Denham was pulling a job. She knew that he was blackmailing me. She followed Denham down to the motel. When he got the payment from me, she killed him.”
“With your gun?” Mason asked drily.
“No, no, now wait—I’m coming to that. I tell you I’ve got the whole thing all figured out.”
“All right,” Mason said. “How do you have it figured out?”
“Obviously she couldn’t have followed Geraldine Corning and me down to the motel. In the first place, Geraldine took all sorts of precautions to keep from being followed, and in the second place, I was the one who picked the motel after she made up her mind that we weren’t being followed. She said I could pick any motel I wanted, and I picked that one.”
“Okay,” Mason said. “You’re making sense so far.”
“All right. This woman knew, however, that Denham was getting ready to put the bite on another victim, so she started shadowing Denham. Denham drove down to the motel to pick up the money. She didn’t have anything on him at that time. He went back and cashed the checks. That was where this woman knew that Denham was on another job.
“So when Denham came back to tell Geraldine that the coast was clear, Geraldine left and the woman had her chance. She had to be hiding down there in the motel. Naturally, she couldn’t hide right on the grounds, so she tried the doors of the adjoining units. It just happened that Elsa had left the door of twelve unlocked because she didn’t have anything valuable in there. The woman slipped into unit twelve and used it as her headquarters. Then she must have killed Denham with her gun.
“After that she cased the place and found that I was lying there asleep, apparently drugged. My brief case was on the floor. Naturally, she got to wondering who I was and how it happened I was asleep, and she went through the brief case. She saw the card giving my name and address in the brief case and she found my gun in there. What better than for her to take out the gun and conceal it where it would never be found. In that way I would be taking the rap for Denham’s murder.”
“Could be,” Mason said noncommittally.
“Therefore, I want you to move heaven and earth to find that woman,” Bedford said. “When we find her and get the real murder weapon, the ballistics experts can prove that it was the gun with which the murder was committed. Then we can find out what she did with my gun after the shooting.
“Can’t you see the play, Mason? This woman prowler the manager saw in unit twelve is the key to the whole mystery.
“Now, I understand you sent Elsa back to the cabin to get fingerprints. Evidently our minds were working along the same lines. Elsa says she got some very good fingerprints of this woman, particularly a couple she got from a glass doorknob.”
“Of course, a lot of the prints were Elsa’s,” Mason pointed out.
“I know. I know,” Bedford said impatiently. “But some of them weren’t. Elsa didn’t even open that closet door. The two fingerprints on the knob simply had to be those of the woman.
“Now, this manager of the motel—whatever his name is—had a chance to talk with this woman. He saw her coming out of the motel, asked her what she was doing and all of that stuff. That makes him a valuable witness. I want you to have your men talk to him again and get the most minute description possible. Then you have these fingerprints to work on. Now damn it, Mason! Get busy on this thing and play it from that angle. It’s a hunch I have.”
“I see,” Mason said.
Bedford said impatiently, “Mason, I’ve got money. I’ve got lots of money. The sky is the limit in this thing. You get all the detectives in the city if you need ’em, but you find that woman. She’s the one we want.”
“Suppose she did kill him with your gun?”
“She couldn’t have. She shadowed Denham down there for one purpose, and only one purpose; she intended to kill him. She’d hardly intend to kill him with her bare hands.”
Mason said, “Before we go all out on that theory, I’d like to be certain the murder wasn’t committed with your gun. In order to prove that we need to have either the gun or some bullets that were fired from it. You don’t know of any trees or stumps where you put up a target for practice, do you?”
“You mean so you can find some old bullets?”
“Yes.”
“No. I don’t think I ever fired the gun.”
“How long have you had it?”
“Five or six years.”
“You signed a firearms register when you bought it?”
“I can’t remember. I guess I must have.”
Mason said, “I have another lead. I want you to keep it confidential.”
“What’s that?”
“The blonde who was with you in the motel.”
“What about her?”
“She had the opportunity and the motive,” Mason pointed out. “She is the really logical suspect.”
Bedford’s face darkened. “Mason, what’s the matter with you? That girl was a good kid. She probably had knocked around but she wasn’t the type to commit a murder.”
“How do you know?” Mason asked.
“Because I spent a day with her. She’s a good kid. She was going to quit the racket.”
“That makes her all the more suspect,” Mason said. “Suppose she told Binney Denham she was going to quit and he started putting on pressure. That left her with only one out. Binney must have had enough on her to crack the whip if she tried to get free.”
Bedford shook his head emphatically. “You’re all wet, Mason. Get after this woman in number twelve.”
“And,” Mason went on, “we could convince a jury that the blonde would logically have taken the gun from your brief case and used it, whereas any woman who was shadowing Binney, intending to kill him, would have had her own gun.”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“So then, if you try to play it your way,” Mason went on, “and the murder weapon does turn out to have been your gun, you’re hooked.”
“You play it the way I’m telling you,” Bedford instructed. “I have a hunch on this and I always play my hunches. After all Mason, if I’m wrong it’ll be my own funeral.”
“You may mean that figuratively,” Mason told him, getting up to go, “but that’s one thing you’ve said that’s really true.”