The D.A. Breaks an Egg

“The friend,” Brandon said, dryly, “was a man whom the sheriff says he’s satisfied Frank Grannis had never seen before in his life, but he put on a good act of backslapping cordiality. As soon as Grannis was admitted to bail, this friend loaded him in an automobile and whisked him out of the county.”

“The attorney, of course, was old A. B. C.?” Selby asked.

“That’s right.”

Selby put tobacco in his pipe, said, “Well, Rex, as the game starts flushing out of cover we begin to get more of a pattern.”

“It isn’t flushing out of cover,” Brandon said. “It’s getting into cover.”

“Well, let’s ring up that great super-sleuth, Otto Larkin, and find out about the murder weapon.”

Brandon picked up the telephone, grinned as he said, “Get me Otto Larkin. Tell him I want him up here. Tell him if he has any evidence in that murder case to bring it up.”

Brandon hung up the phone and said, “At least The Clarion will be able to run the story in the morning edition showing that we’ve identified the corpse and perhaps with an innuendo or two about the mysterious case on which this detective was working when she was murdered. That will give the other side something to worry about.”

Selby nodded, looked at his watch, and said, “I’ll bet Otto Larkin would like to cross the next half-hour right out of his life.”

16

Otto Larkin’s wide-eyed, cherubic innocence failed to hide his embarrassment.

“Gosh,” he blurted out, “I didn’t know I was going to run into a deal of that sort. I guess I just got caught in a political squeeze play, and...”

“What about this murder weapon?” Brandon interrupted.

Larkin eased his ponderous frame into a chair. Eager affability oozed out of him like the perspiration on his palms. “Now, look, fellows,” he said, “I tried to get in touch with you on that but it was a last-minute development.”

“And so you got in touch with The Blade instead?” Brandon asked.

“It just happened that they had a man in touch with me, and... well, I didn’t know just what to do. I thought if I held out on them we’d make them hostile and... well, you know how it is. There isn’t a case against Dorothy Clifton except for that murder weapon. Of course, we have bloodstains and it was her car that was in the park, and all that, but... well, you know, I don’t want to go off half-cocked.”

“Well, what about the murder weapon?” Selby asked.

“Well, you see it was this way, fellows. I covered the garages looking for the murder car and of course I spotted this one and learned it belonged to Dorothy Clifton, so I thought I’d go talk with her. As soon as I talked with her, I knew that she was concealing something, so I put a little pressure on her and found out about her wild story that the car had been taken the night before. Well, she left the Lennox place and went to the hotel. I waited around and after she went out I got a passkey, and...”

“But what about the murder weapon?”

“I’m coming to that,” Larkin said. “I found a blouse with some bloodstains on it in her suitcase and Doc Carson made a test for me and said they were human bloodstains.”

“Did you get a type?” Selby asked.

“Yes, he was able to give me a type — Type A.”

“Just what made you feel that a woman stabbing another woman would get bloodstains on the front of her blouse?” Selby asked.

“Well, now,” Larkin said, fidgeting, “I was working pretty fast there, fellows. I didn’t have a chance to go into all the angles on this thing the way you would before a trial.”

“Well, get to the murder weapon,” Brandon said.

Larkin said hastily, “I found these bloodstains on the blouse. Now you take in a case of stabbing — well, it was a highly significant clue.”

“You felt that it was blood from the victim?” Selby asked.

“Sure,” Larkin said.

“And just how would Dorothy Clifton have got blood on the front of her blouse from stabbing another woman in the back when the evidence shows there was no spurting blood from the wound?”

“Well, she could have tripped and fallen, and fallen right on top of the body, or when she pulled the knife out she could have... well, anyway, it was blood, and I considered that a highly suspicious circumstance.”

“Blood of Type A,” Selby said. “Incidentally, the victim in this case had blood of Type O.”

Larkin looked at him with the dazed expression of one who is trying to assimilate the importance of information but fails entirely to grasp its significance.

“The hell she did,” he blurted.

“However, go ahead,” Brandon said. “Let’s get to this business of the murder weapon.”

“Well,” Larkin said, “when I found the bloodstained blouse and looked over the front seat of the automobile and found a little speck of blood on the side of the left-hand door — and all of this other stuff certainly fitted together, I went back out to the Lennox place and found out just where Dorothy Clifton’s car had been parked. Then I started an intensive search.”