The D.A. Breaks an Egg

Moana said scornfully, “How long does it take a person to stick a knife in another person, Mr. Selby?”

Selby acknowledged the point with a smile. “That’s not a definite answer to my question, however.”

She said, “I’d prefer not to answer the question just as you asked it. She was gone at least three minutes. It seemed longer.”

Selby glanced inquiringly at Horace Lennox.

Horace said, “That’s all of her story, gentlemen.”

“Carr didn’t know that you were coming here?” Selby asked.

She shook her head. “No one knows. Horace sweated it out of me. He knew that Dorothy wasn’t the one who had driven the car that night and so he... well, he went to work on me.”

She glanced at her brother and suddenly there was bitter anger in her eyes. She said jealously, “He’s so completely wrapped up in that Dorothy person that he doesn’t care what happens to his own sister!”

“It isn’t that, Moana,” Horace interposed quickly. “I love you, and I love Dorothy. I knew Dorothy was innocent. Good Lord, you wouldn’t let her become involved in a murder simply to save you from the consequences of gossip, would you?”

She said, “A really smart lawyer would fix it so I didn’t have to sacrifice myself.”

“Perhaps your friend Mr. Carr would,” Horace said sarcastically.

She looked at him appraisingly as though seeing him only as an attorney and not as a relative.

“I think perhaps he would,” she said. “In fact, I know he would. But you dragged the story out of me and then took me up here, and now — now, I’m licked.”

Brandon glanced at Selby.

Selby said, “Don’t tell your story to anyone for a while, Moana. Just go home and keep your own counsel. The sheriff and I will talk things over and see what can be done. And thanks a lot, Horace, for your co-operation.”

“Yes,” Moana said, as she arose from the chair she had been occupying, and started for the door. “Thank you very much, Horace, for your co-operation and desire to save your pretty little fiancée — at no matter what cost to your sister!”

24

Brandon picked up the telephone, said to the operator, “Rush through a call to the sheriff’s office at El Centro. I’ll hold the line. Put it through as a police emergency.”

A moment later Brandon said, “Hello. This is Brandon at Madison City. About this prisoner, Frank Grannis, I have reason to believe he’s innocent of that hit-and-run charge. I think he was framed on that, but he can be of a lot of help to us on a case we’re working on up here; a murder case, and there’s a question of subornation of perjury in connection with it. Now you might get in touch with him and explain to him that if he wants to co-operate we’ll try to dig up proof that will get him out of the charge down there. We’ll show you that you really have the wrong party and... what’s that? When?

“I see. All right. Well then, I guess that’s that. Good-by.”

Brandon hung up the telephone, turned to Selby and said, “Too late again.”

“What happened?”

“Carr rang up the judge at seven-thirty this morning, told him there’d been some trouble with the surety bond and talked the judge into making a new order for one thousand dollars’ cash bail. Carr had a local attorney on the ground with the cash within ten minutes of the time the new bail order was made. Frank Grannis walked out of jail over an hour ago. With the stakes Carr’s playing for, a thousand dollars is a drop in the bucket. He’ll toss that away and think nothing of it. We’ll never find Grannis. Not now.”

Brandon slumped down in the chair. “Damn the guy. He always seems to be one jump ahead of us.”

Selby, snuggling the warm bowl of his pipe in his hand, started walking the floor, from time to time putting the pipe to his mouth for a few thoughtful puffs.

“Now,” he said, “the thing begins to make a pattern we can follow and understand. Darwin Jerome, intensely jealous, driving like a madman, trying to beat Moana Lennox back to Madison City, hits a cyclist on a lonely, deserted section of the road across the sand dunes from Yuma to El Centro.

“We can probably give him credit for having stopped to investigate. He found he’d killed a Mexican cyclist and that there was nothing he could do by way of giving aid. So he got back in his car and speeded on toward Madison City.