The D.A. Breaks an Egg

“I daresay you do. I want to take a shower. I’ll see you later.”

“Look here,” Selby said, “is there anyone in town who can identify you, anyone whom you know?”

“Yes, but I hate to call on her.”

“Who?”

“She’s a girl I used to know. She’s married now. I don’t want to bother her.”

“What’s her name?”

“Her name’s Babe, but now she’s married to some attorney, a man by the name of... Let me see... I can’t recall it. I’ll have to look it up. Damn it, and that letter was in my purse, the one that was stolen.”

“What was her name before she was married?”

“Babe Harlan — that is, we called her Babe, but I guess her real name was Eleanor.”

“And you don’t know the name of the man she married?”

“Perhaps I can recall it after a while, but I’ve forgotten it. I don’t suppose you’d be a good scout and ask the hotel to okay my charges for a few days until I can make an affidavit on my lost travelers’ checks? I guess I’ll have breakfast sent up to the room and at least be that much ahead.”

Selby said, “Did you receive a wire from...?”

“Mr. Selby, I’ve told you that I’m going to get up out of bed and take a shower. I’m going to put on a robe and have breakfast in my room. I...”

“I’m interested in knowing whether you came here as a result of a wire you received.”

“You say you haven’t been married,” she said. “In about four seconds you’re going to learn a lot about the way a woman performs her toilette, because I’m going to get up and...”

“I want to know...”

“I presume,” she said, “this being a small town, the local inhabitants would be quite scandalized when the waiter who brings up my breakfast finds you sitting here tête-à-tête with a nude woman.”

“You’re not nude,” Selby said.

She flung back the covers. “But I’m going to be.”

Selby opened the door and walked out.

Mocking laughter followed him into the corridor.

9

Harry P. Elrod, reporter for “The Blade,” the evening paper which was bitterly hostile to the administration, was quite evidently enjoying himself. “My new publisher, Phillip L. Paden, asked me to extend greetings,” he said. “I understand he had a nice chat with the district attorney yesterday.”

Sheriff Brandon, unmistakably ill at ease, looked at his watch, and said, “We haven’t all day to sit here and swap talk with you, Elrod.”

Elrod grinned. “That means you have a live clue, Sheriff? You’ve already got a live corpse.”

“It means I’m busy.”

“Too busy to talk with the press.”

“We’re talking with you, aren’t we?”

“Do you mean to imply there’s some urgent development that...”

“It means we’re working on a murder case,” Brandon said, “and while we’re willing to play ball with the press, even a hostile paper represented by a...”

Selby interrupted suavely to say, “We’ll be glad to answer any questions we can, Elrod. We have several leads that we’re running down. We can’t tell whether any of them are what you might call hot leads until after we’ve investigated them.”

Elrod, a slender, sharp-tongued, skeptical bit of newspaper driftwood from the big city, turned his attention to Selby. His eyes sparkled shrewdly as he developed the background of what he knew was going to be the story of the year so far as The Blade was concerned.

A shrewd, scheming man of considerable ingenuity, his hard-drinking propensities had caused him to drift from the field of metropolitan journalism into Madison City where he displayed an open contempt for the thick atmosphere.

That patronizing contempt had alienated people whose friendship a successful county seat reporter should have cultivated, but the man’s brilliance, audacity, and facile pen had caused most of the officials to fear his anger or sarcasm. And the net result had been fully as advantageous to Elrod as though he had enjoyed the friendship of those who catered to him through fear.

“It ain’t how you get in that counts, it’s what you take out” was his favorite expression.

“Well, now, Mr. Selby,” he said, “that brings up a very interesting point. How did you happen to make this mistake of identifying the corpse as being that of Daphne Arcola, a young woman who insists, in an exclusive interview given to The Blade an hour ago, that she is very much alive?”

Elrod grinned gleefully.

“I didn’t identify the body,” Selby said.

“Didn’t you tell the night clerk at the hotel...”

“I told the night clerk at the hotel that I was interested in finding out whatever I could about a redheaded woman in her twenties from Windrift, Montana.”

“And how did you know she came from Windrift?”

“There was a label in the jacket she was wearing, showing it had been sold in Windrift.”

“So you searched Daphne Arcola’s room, after first calling in the press — the competitive press, Mr. Selby.”

“I didn’t call in anyone,” Selby said. “The representative of The Clarion was with me when I went to the hotel. If you had been there, doubtless you would have been accorded the same privileges.”

“May I quote you on that?” Elrod asked sarcastically.