The D.A. Breaks an Egg

He picked up the telephone receiver and said to the clerk at the desk, “I want you to call back that number, West 9328, the one Miss Arcola called earlier in the evening. I’ll hold the telephone.”

Sylvia Martin moved over to stand near the door, anxiously watching her wrist watch.

Selby waited while he could hear the connection being made, and then the sound of the intermittent, persistent ringing of the telephone at the other end of the line.

Sylvia said, “Doug, be a sport, and get everything you can over the telephone so I can...”

The receiver was lifted at the other end of the line and a woman’s precise voice said, “Hello. What is it, please?”

“West 9328?”

“Yes.”

“This is Douglas Selby, the district attorney. I’m very sorry to bother you at this hour of the night but it’s a matter of considerable importance.”

“Yes, what is it, please?”

“May I ask to whom I’m speaking?”

“This is Mrs. Lorraine Lennox.”

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Lennox, I’m very sorry that I got you up out of bed, and...”

“You didn’t get me up out of bed, young man. As a law enforcement officer you should know what’s been happening here.”

“What’s been happening?” Selby repeated.

“Exactly.”

“Would you mind telling me to what you’re referring, Mrs. Lennox?”

“The call that we put in to the police. Someone broke into my daughter’s bedroom two hours ago and stole some very valuable jewelry. We none of us feel like going to bed.”

Selby glanced toward Sylvia Martin. “You say someone broke into the house?”

“That’s right.”

“Into your daughter’s bedroom and stole some valuable jewelry?”

“Yes.”

Sylvia’s eyes were dancing with excitement. She tapped her wrist watch and made frantic signals to Selby.

“May I ask if you received a call earlier this evening from a Miss Daphne Arcola?”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“I’m not certain. It may have something to do with it.”

“Well,” Mrs. Lennox said, “I think you officers are going all around the barn to find the door. Personally, I know no Daphne Arcola and have received no call from her.”

“It’s quite important,” Selby said. “Would you mind asking the other members of your family if any of them received such a call? If no one did I’ll have to assume the call came in when no one was home.”

“Just hold the phone,” Mrs. Lennox said. Then after a short interval she said, “Someone has been here all day. I was here myself, and some of the members of the family have been here as well. There is no possibility the telephone could have rung and not been answered. I have asked, and no one here knows a person named Arcola and no call has been received from anyone by that name. Now, what I want to know is what you propose to do about the burglary?”

“We’re going to investigate it immediately,” Selby said. “You’ve notified the police?”

“Yes. The police have been here. They left about an hour ago. Frankly, I was not at all favorably impressed.”

“Well, we’ll see what we can do,” Selby promised, and hung up.

Sylvia Martin stood in the doorway. Selby said, “Someone was there all evening, all day in fact. She says no one talked with Daphne Arcola and that if the phone had rung someone was there who would have answered it. Either the clerk here is mistaken or someone out there is lying. They had a burglary two hours ago. City police were there.”

“That’s great, Doug. I’m on my way. Will you ring me at the paper if anything more happens within the next ten minutes? I’m off!”

She gently closed the door.

“Well,” Selby said, “we may as well start looking around. There’s no sign of her purse here, Rex, and there’s nothing much to give us a clue, just a suitcase full of the things a girl would ordinarily use in making a trip of short duration. I don’t think she intended to be away very long.”

Rex Brandon prowled around the room.

“I’m indebted to Sylvia for the appraisal,” Selby said. “Evidently she arrived shortly before eight o’clock this evening. She came to the hotel, placed her telephone calls, apparently took a bath, and left these stockings and the lingerie to be washed out in the washbowl tonight.”

“And then she went out and got herself killed,” Brandon said.

“Exactly.”

“Well,” Brandon said, “I don’t think we’re going to find out much about who did it until we find out more about her — unless, of course, it was some thug who was riding along in an automobile and saw her in the park, but that doesn’t seem very logical to me. In the first place, we don’t have that type of criminal here in this agricultural community, and in the second place, I don’t see why she would have gone to the park.”

Selby said, “Well, we...”

He broke off suddenly as the telephone rang sharply two times, in quick succession.

“What’s that?” Brandon said.

Selby said, “That’s a signal the clerk’s giving us. I told him to ring three times in case the girl herself should show up, twice if someone came in and took the elevator to this floor. Of course, it may be anyone with a room on this floor.”

Brandon nodded.